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THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 



The 

Amateur Emigrant 

From the Clyde to 
Sandy Hook 



BY 
ROBERT L.OUTS STEVENSON 



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NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

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COPYRIGHT, 1895 
BY STONE & KIMBALL 



THE CAXTON PRESS 
NEW YORK. 



TO 

Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson. 

Our friendship was not only founded before we were 
born by a community of blood, but is in itself near 
as old as my life. It began with our early ages, 
and, like a history, has been continued to the present 
time. Although we may not be old in the world, we 
are old to each other, having so long been intimates. 
We are now widely separated, a great sea and conti- 
nent intervening ; but memory, like care, mounts into 
iron ships and rides Post behind the horseman. 
Neither time nor space nor enmity can conquer old 
affection; and as I dedicate these sketches, it is not 
to you only, but to all in the old country, that I 

send the greeting of my heart. 

R. L. S. 



The Second Cabin 



FIRST encountered my fellow- 
A passengers on the Broomielaw in 
Glasgow. Thence we descended the 
Clyde in no familiar spirit, but looking 
askance on each other as on possible ene- 
mies. A few Scandinavians, who had 
already grown acquainted on the North 
Sea, were friendly and voluble over their 
long pipes ; but among English speak- 
ers distance and suspicion reigned 
supreme. The sun was soon over- 
clouded, the wind freshened and grew 
sharp as we continued to descend the 
widening estuary ; and with the falling 
temperature the gloom among the pas- 
sengers increased. Two of the women 
wept. Any one who had come aboard 
might have supposed we were all 



2 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

absconding from the law. There was 
scarce a word interchanged, and no 
common sentiment but that of cold 
united us, until at length, having touched 
at Greenock, a pointing arm and a rush 
to the starboard now announced that 
our ocean steamer was in sight. There 
she lay in mid-river, at the tail of the 
Bank, her sea-signal flying : a wall of 
bulwark, a street of white deck-houses, 
an aspiring forest of spars, larger than a 
church, and soon to be as populous as 
many an incorporated town in the land 
to which she was to bear us. 

I was not, in truth, a steerage passen- 
ger. Although anxious to see the worst 
of emigrant life, I had some work to 
finish on the voyage, and was advised 
to go by the second cabin, where at least 
I should have a table at command. 
The advice was excellent ; but to under- 
stand the choice, and what I gained, 
some outline of the internal disposition 



THE SECOND CABIN. 3 

of the ship will first be necessary. In 
her very nose is Steerage No. 1, down 
two pair of stairs. A little abaft, an- 
other companion, labelled Steerage No. 
2 and 3, gives admission to three galler- 
ies, two running forward towards Steer- 
age No. 1, and the third aft towards the 
engines. The starboard forward gallery 
is the second cabin. Away abaft the 
engines and below the officers' cabins, 
to complete our survey of the vessel, 
there is yet a third nest of steerages, 
labelled 4 and 5. The second cabin, to 
return, is thus a modified oasis in the 
very heart of the steerages. Through 
the thin partition you can hear the steer- 
age passengers being sick, the rattle of 
tin dishes as they sit at meals, the varied 
accents in which they converse, the cry- 
ing of their children terrified by this 
new experience, or the clean flat smack 
of the parental hand in chastisement. 
There are, however, many advantages 



4 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

for the inhabitant of this strip. He 
does not require to bring his own bed- 
ding or dishes, but finds berths and a 
table completely if somewhat roughly 
furnished. He enjoys a distinct supe- 
riority in diet ; but this, strange to say, 
differs not only on different ships, but 
on the same ship according as her head 
is to the east or west. In my own exper- 
ience, the principal difference between 
our table and that of the true steerage 
passenger was the table itself, and 
the crockery plates from which we ate. 
But lest I should show myself ungrate- 
ful, let me recapitulate every advantage. 
At breakfast, we had a choice between 
tea and coffee for beverage; a choice 
not easy to make, the two were so sur- 
prisingly alike. I found that I could 
sleep after the coffee and lay awake after 
the tea, which is proof conclusive of 
some chemical disparity; and even by 
the palate I could distinguish a smack 



THE SECOND CABIN. 5 

of snuff in the former from a flavour of 
boiling and dish-cloths in the second. 
As a matter of fact, I have seen passen- 
gers, after many sips, still doubting 
which had been supplied them. In the 
way of eatables at the same meal we 
were gloriously favoured ; for in addi- 
tion to porridge, which was common to 
all, we had Irish stew, sometimes a bit 
of fish, and sometimes rissoles. The 
dinner of soup, roast fresh beef, boiled 
salt junk, and potatoes, was, I believe, 
exactly common to the steerage and the 
second cabin ; only I have heard it 
rumoured that our potatoes were of a 
superior brand ; and twice a week, on 
pudding days, instead of duff, we had a 
saddle-bag filled with currants under the 
name of a plum-pudding. At tea we 
were served with some broken meat from 
the saloon ; sometimes in the compara- 
tively elegant form of spare patties or 
rissoles; but as a general thing, mere 



6 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

chicken-bones and flakes of fish, neither 
hot nor cold. If these were not the 
scrapings of plates their looks belied 
them sorely; yet we were all too hungry 
to be proud, and fell to these leavings 
greedily. These, the bread, which was 
excellent, and the soup and porridge 
which were both good, formed my whole 
diet throughout the voyage; so that 
except for the broken meat and the con- 
venience of a table I might as well have 
been in the steerage outright. Had they 
given me porridge again in the evening, 
I should have been perfectly contented 
with the fare. As it was, with a few 
biscuits and some whisky and water 
before turning in, I kept my body going 
and my spirits up to the mark. 

The last particular in which the sec- 
ond cabin passenger remarkably stands 
ahead of his brother of the steerage is 
one altogether of sentiment. In the 
steerage there are males and females ; in 



THE SECOND CABIN. 7 

the second cabin ladies and gentlemen. 
For some time after I came aboard I 
thought I was only a male ; but in the 
course of a voyage of discovery between 
decks, I came on a brass plate, and 
learned that I was still a gentleman. 
Nobody knew it, of course. I was lost 
in the crowd of males and females, and 
rigorously confined to the same quarter 
of the deck. Who could tell whether I 
housed on the port or star-board side of 
steerage No. 2 and 3 ? And it was only 
there that my superiority became prac- 
tical j everywhere else I was incognito, 
moving among my inferiors with sim- 
plicity, not so much as a swagger to 
indicate that I was a gentleman after 
all, and had broken meat to tea. Still, 
I was like one with a patent of nobility 
in a drawer at home ; and when I felt 
out of spirits I could go down and 
refresh myself with a look of that brass 
plate. 



8 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

For all these advantages I paid but 
two guineas. Six guineas is the steer- 
age fare ; eight that by the second cabin ; 
and when you remember that the steer- 
age passenger must supply bedding and 
dishes, and, in five cases out of ten, 
either brings some dainties with him, or 
privately pays the steward for extra 
rations, the difference in price becomes 
almost nominal. Air comparatively fit 
to breathe, food comparatively varied, 
and the satisfaction of being still pri- 
vately a gentleman, may thus be had 
almost for the asking. Two of my fel- 
low-passengers in the second cabin had 
already made the passage by the cheaper 
fare, and declared it was an experiment 
not to be repeated. As I go on to tell 
about my steerage friends, the reader 
will perceive that they were not alone in 
their opinion. Out of ten with whom I 
was more or less intimate, I am sure not 
fewer than five vowed, if they returned, 



THE SECOND CABIN. g 

to travel second cabin ; and all who had 
left their wives behind them assured me 
they would go without the comfort of 
their presence until they could afford to 
bring them by saloon. 

Our party in the second cabin was 
not perhaps the most interesting on 
board. Perhaps even in the saloon 
there was as much good-will and char- 
acter. Yet it had some elements of 
curiosity. There was a mixed group of 
Swedes, Danes, and Norsemen, one of 
whom, generally known by the name of 
'Johnny,' in spite of his own protests, 
greatly diverted us by his clever, cross- 
country efforts to speak English, and 
became on the strength of that an uni- 
versal favourite — it takes so little in this 
world of shipboard to create a popu- 
larity. There was, besides, a Scots 
mason, known from his favourite dish 
as 'Irish Stew," three or four nonde- 
script Scots, a fine young Irishman, 



10 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

O'Reilly, and a pair of young men who 
deserve a special word of condemna- 
tion. One of them was Scots ; the 
other claimed to be American ; admitted, 
after some fencing, that he was born in 
England ; and ultimately proved to be 
an Irishman born and nurtured, but 
ashamed to own his country. He had a 
sister on board, whom he faithfully neg- 
lected throughout the voyage, though 
she was not only sick, but much his 
senior, and had nursed and cared for 
him in childhood. In appearance he 
was like an imbecile Henry the Third 
of France. The Scotsman, though per- 
haps as big an ass, was not so dead of 
heart ; and I have only bracketed them 
together because they were fast friends, 
and disgraced themselves equally by 
their conduct at the table. 

Next, to turn to topics more agree- 
able, we had a newly married couple, 
devoted to each other, with a pleasant 



THE SECOND CABIN. II 

story of how they had first seen each 
other years ago at a preparatory school, 
and that very afternoon he had carried 
her books home for her. I do not 
know if this story will be plain to 
Southern readers ; but to me it recalls 
many a school idyll, with wrathful 
swains of eight and nine confronting 
each other stride-legs, flushed with jeal- 
ousy ; for to carry home a young lady's 
books was both a delicate attention and 
a privilege. 

Then there was an old lady, or indeed 
I am not sure that she was as much old 
as antiquated and strangely out of 
place, who had left her husband, and 
was traveling all the way to Kansas by 
herself. We had to take her own word 
that she was married ; for it was sorely 
contradicted by the testimony of her 
appearance. Nature seemed to have 
sanctified her for the single state ; even 
the colour of her hair was incompatible 
2 



12 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

with matrimony, and her husband, I 
thought, should be a man of saintly 
spirit and phantasmal bodily presence. 
She was ill, poor thing ; her soul turned 
from the viands; the dirty tablecloth 
shocked her like an impropriety ; and 
the whole strength of her endeavour was 
bent upon keeping her watch true to 
Glasgow time till she should reach New 
York. They had heard reports, her 
husband and she, of some unwarrantable 
disparity of hours between these two 
cities; and with a spirit commendably 
scientific, had seized on this occasion to 
put them to the proof. It was a good 
thing for the old lady ; for she passed 
much leisure time in studying the 
watch. Once, when prostrated by sick- 
ness, she let it run down. It was 
inscribed on her harmless mind in let- 
ters of adamant that the hands of a 
watch must never be turned backwards ; 
and so it behooved her to lie in wait for 



THE SECOND CABIN. 1 3 

the exact moment ere she started it 
again. When she imagined this was 
about due, she sought out one of the 
young second-cabin Scotsmen, who was 
embarked on the same experiment as 
herself and had hitherto been less neg- 
lectful. She was in quest of two o'clock; 
and when she learned it was already 
seven on the shores of Clyde, she lifted 
up her voice and cried 'Gravy!' I 
had not heard this innocent expletive 
since I was a young child ; and I sup- 
pose it must have been the same with 
the other Scotsmen present, for we all 
laughed our fill. 

Last but not least, I come to my 
excellent friend Mr. Jones. It would be 
difficult to say whether I was his right- 
hand man, or he mine, during the voy- 
age. Thus at table I carved, while he 
only scooped gravy ; but at our concerts, 
of which more anon, he was the presi- 
dent who called up performers to sing, 



14 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

and I but his messenger who ran his 
errands and pleaded privately with the 
over-modest. I knew I liked Mr. Jones 
from the moment I saw him. I thought 
him by his face to be Scottish ; nor 
could his accent undeceive me. For as 
there is a lingua franca of many 
tongues on the moles and in the feluc- 
cas of the Mediterranean, so there is a 
free or common accent among English- 
speaking men who follow the sea. They 
catch a twang in a New England port ; 
from a cockney skipper, even a Sects- 
man sometimes learns to drop an h; a 
word of a dialect is picked up from 
another hand in the forecastle; until 
often the result is undecipherable, and 
you have to ask for the man's place of 
birth. So it was with Mr. Jones. I 
thought him a Scotsman who had been 
long to sea; and yet he was from 
Wales, and had been most of his life a 
blacksmith at an inland forge ; a few 



THE SECOND CABIN. 1 5 

years in America and half a score of 
ocean voyages having sufficed to modify 
his speech into the common pattern. 
By his own account he was both strong 
and skilful in his trade. A few years 
back, he had been married and after a 
fashion a rich man ; now the wife was 
dead and the money gone. But his was 
the nature that looks forward, and goes 
on from one year to another and 
through all the extremities of fortune 
undismayed ; and if the sky were to fall 
to-morrow, I should look to see Jones, 
the day following, perched on a step- 
ladder and getting things to rights. 
He was always hovering round inven- 
tions like a bee over a flower, and lived 
in a dream of patents. He had with 
him a patent medicine, for instance, the 
composition of which he had bought 
years ago for five dollars from an Amer- 
ican peddler, and sold the other day 
for a hundred pounds (I think it was) 



l6 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

to an English apothecary. It was 
called Golden Oil, cured all maladies 
without exception ; and I am bound to 
say that I partook of it myself with 
good results. It is a character of the 
man that he was not only perpetually 
dosing himself with Golden Oil, but 
wherever there was a head aching or a 
finger cut, there would be Jones with his 
bottle. 

If he had one taste more strongly 
than another, it was to study character. 
Many an hour have we two walked upon 
the deck dissecting our neighbors in a 
spirit that was too purely scientific to be 
called unkind; whenever a quaint or 
human trait slipped out in conversation, 
you might have seen Jones and me 
exchanging glances; and we could 
hardly go to bed in comfort till we had 
exchanged notes and discussed the day's 
experience. We were then like a couple 
of anglers comparing a day's kill. But 



THE SECOND CABIN. 1 7 

the fish we angled for were of a meta- 
physical species, and we angled as often 
as not in one another's baskets. Once, 
in the midst of a serious talk, each found 
there was a scrutinising eye upon him- 
self; I own I paused in embarrassment 
at this double detection ; but Jones, with 
a better civility, broke into a peal of 
unaffected laughter, and declared, what 
was the truth, that there was a pair of 
us indeed. 



Early Impressions 



\\ TE steamed out of the Clyde on 
" Thursday night,' and early on 

the Friday forenoon we took in our last 
batch of emigrants at Lough Foyle, in 
Ireland, and said farewell to Europe. 
The company was now complete, and 
began to draw together, by inscrutable 
magnetisms, upon the decks. There 
were Scots and Irish in plenty, a few 
English, a few Americans, a good hand- 
ful of Scandinavians, a German or two, 
and one Russian ; all now belonging for 
ten days to one small iron country on 
the deep. 

As I walked the deck and looked 

round upon my fellow-passengers, thus 

curiously assorted from all northern 

Europe, I began for the first time to 

19 



20 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

understand the nature of emigration. 
Day by day throughout the passage, and 
thenceforward across all the States, and 
on to the shores of the Pacific, this 
knowledge grew more clear and melan- 
choly. Emigration, from a word of the 
most cheerful import, came to sound 
most dismally in my ear. There is 
nothing more agreeable to picture and 
nothing more pathetic to behold. The 
abstract idea, as conceived at home, is 
hopeful and adventurous. A young man, 
you fancy, scorning restraints and help- 
ers, issues forth into life, that great bat- 
tle, to fight for his own hand. The 
most pleasant stories of ambition, of 
difficulties overcome, and of ultimate 
success, are but as episodes to this great 
epic of self-help. The epic is composed 
of individual heroisms ; it stands to 
them as the victorious war which sub- 
dued an empire stands to the personal 
act of bravery which spiked a single can 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 21 

non and was adequately rewarded with 
a medal. For in emigration the young 
men enter direct and by the shipload 
on their heritage of work ; empty conti- 
nents swarm, as at the bo'sun's whistle, 
with industrious hands, and whole new 
empires are domesticated to the service 
of man. 

This is the closet picture, and is 
found, on trial, to consist mostly of 
embellishments. The more I saw of my 
fellow-passengers, the less I was tempted 
to the lyric note. Comparatively few 
of the men were below thirty; many 
were married, and encumbered with 
families ; not a few were already up in 
years; and this itself was out of tune 
with my imaginations, for the ideal emi- 
grant should certainly be young. Again, 
I thought he should offer to the eye 
some bold type of humanity, with bluff 
or hawk-like features, and the stamp of 
an eager and pushing disposition. Now 



22 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

those around me were for the most part 
quiet, orderly, obedient citizens, family 
men broken by adversity, elderly youths 
who had failed to place themselves in life, 
and people who had seen better days. 
Mildness was the prevailing character; 
mild mirth and mild endurance. In a 
word I was not taking part in an impetu- 
ous and conquering sally, such as swept 
over Mexico or Siberia, but found 
myself, like Marmion, 'in the lost bat- 
tle, borne down by the flying.' 

Labouring mankind had in the last 
years, and throughout Great Britain, 
sustained a prolonged and crushing 
series of defeats. I had heard vaguely 
of these reverses; of whole streets of 
houses standing deserted by the Tyne, 
the cellar-doors broken and removed for 
firewood ; of homeless men loitering at 
the street-corners of Glasgow with their 
chests beside them ; of closed factories, 
useless strikes, and starving girls. But 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 23 

I had never taken them home to me or 
represented these distresses livingly to 
my imagination. A turn of the market 
may be a calamity as disastrous as the 
French retreat from Moscow; but it 
hardly lends itself to lively treatment, 
and makes a trifling figure in the morn- 
ing papers. We may struggle as we 
please, we are not born economists. 
The individual is more affecting than 
the mass. It is by the scenic accidents, 
and the appeal to the carnal eye, that 
for the most part we grasp the signifi- 
cance of tragedies. Thus it was only 
now, when I found myself involved in 
the rout, that I began to appreciate how 
sharp had been the battle. We were a 
company of the rejected ; the drunken, 
the incompetent, the weak, the prodigal, 
all who had been unable to prevail 
against circumstances in the one 
land, were now fleeing pitifully to 
another ; and though one or two might 



24 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

still succeed, all had already failed. We 
were a shipful of failures, the broken 
men of England. Yet it must not be 
supposed that these people exhibited 
depression. The scene, on the contrary, 
was cheerful. Not a tear was shed on 
board the vessel. All were full of hope 
for the future, and showed an inclina- 
tion to innocent gaiety. Some were 
heard to sing, and all began to scrape 
acquaintance with small jests and ready 
laughter. 

The children found each other out 
like dogs, and ran about the decks scrap- 
ing acquaintance after their fashion also. 
1 What do you call your mither ? ' I 
heard one ask. 'Mawmaw,' was the 
reply, indicating, I fancy, a shade of 
difference in the social scale. When 
people pass each other on the high seas 
of life at so early an age, the contact is 
but slight, and the relation more like 
what we may imagine to be the friend- 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 25 

ship of flies than that of men ; it is so 
quickly joined, so easily dissolved, so 
open in its communications and so 
devoid of deeper human qualities. The 
children, I observed, were all in a band, 
and as thick as thieves at a fair, while 
their elders were still ceremoniously 
manoeuvring on the outskirts of acquaint- 
ance. The sea, the ship, and the sea- 
men were soon as familiar as home to 
these half-conscious little ones. It was 
odd to hear them, throughout the voy- 
age, employ shore words to designate 
portions of the vessel. ' Co ' 'way doon 
to yon dyke/ I heard one say, probably 
meaning the bulwark. I often had 
my heart in my mouth, watching them 
climb into the shrouds or on the rails, 
while the ship went swinging through 
the waves ; and I admired and envied 
the courage of their mothers, who sat 
by in the sun and looked on with com- 
posure at these perilous feats. * He '11 



26 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT 

maybe be a sailor/ I heard one 
remark; 'now's the time to learn.' I 
had been on the point of running for- 
ward to interfere, but stood back at that 
reproved. Very few in the more deli- 
cate classes have the nerve to look upon 
the peril of one dear to them ; but the 
life of poorer folk, where necessity is so 
much more immediate and imperious, 
braces even a mother to this extreme of 
endurance. And perhaps, after all, it is 
better that the lad should break his 
neck than that you should break his 
spirit. 

And since I am here on the chapter 
of the children, I must mentiou one lit- 
tle fellow, whose family belonged to 
Steerage No. 4 and 5, and who where- 
ever he went, was like a strain of music 
round the ship. He was an ugly, merry, 
unbreeched child of three, his lint-white 
hair in a tangle, his face smeared with 
suet and treacle ; but he ran to and fro 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 2? 

with so natural a step, and fell and 
picked himself up again with such grace 
and good-humour, that he might fairly 
be called beautiful when he was in 
motion. To meet him, crowing with 
laughter and beating an accompaniment 
to his own mirth with a tin spoon upon 
a tin cup, was to meet a little triumph 
of the human species. Even when his 
mother and the rest of his family lay 
sick and prostrate around him, he sat 
upright in their midst and sang aloud 
in the pleasant heartlessness of infancy. 
Throughout the Friday, intimacy 
among us men made but a few advances. 
We discussed the probable duration of 
the voyage, we exchanged pieces of 
information, naming our trades, what 
we hoped to find in the new world, or 
what we were fleeing from in the old ; 
and, above all, we condoled together 
over the food and the vileness of the 
steerage. One or two had been so near 
3 



28 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

famine that you may say they had run 
into the ship with the devil at their 
heels ; and to these all seemed for the 
best in the best of possible steamers. 
But the majority were hugely discon- 
tented. Coming as they did from a 
country in so low a state as Great 
Britain, many of them from Glasgow, 
which commercially speaking was as 
good as dead, and many having long 
been out of work, I was surprised to 
find them so dainty in their notions. I 
myself lived almost exclusively on bread, 
porridge, and soup, precisely as it was 
supplied to them, and found it, if not 
luxurious, at least sufficient. But these 
working men were loud in their out- 
cries. It was not 'food for human 
beings,' it was 'only fit for pigs,' it was 
'a disgrace.' Many of them lived 
almost entirely upon biscuit, others on 
their own private supplies, and some 
paid extra for better rations from the 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 29 

ship. This marvellously changed my 
notion of the degree of luxury habitual 
to the artisan. I was prepared to hear 
him grumble, for grumbling is the trav- 
eller's pastime ;-but I was not prepared 
to find him turn away from a diet which 
was palatable to myself. Words I 
should have disregarded, or taken with 
a liberal allowance; but when a man 
prefers dry biscuit there can be no ques- 
tion of the sincerity of his disgust. 

With one of their complaints I could 
most heartily sympathise. A single 
night of the steerage had filled them 
with horror. I had myself suffered, 
even in my decent second-cabin berth, 
from the lack of air ; and as the night 
promised to be fine and quiet, I deter- 
mined to sleep on deck, and advised all 
who complained of their quarters to 
follow my example. I daresay a dozen 
of others agreed to do so, and I thought 
we should have been quite a party. 



30 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

Yet, when I brought up my rug about 
seven bells, there was no one to be seen 
but the watch. That chimerical terror 
of good night-air, which makes men 
close their windows, list their doors, and 
seal themselves up with their own poison- 
ous exhalations, had sent all these healthy 
workmen down below. One would 
think we had been brought up in a 
fever country ; yet in England the most 
malarious districts are in the bed- 
chambers. 

I felt saddened at this defection, and 
yet half-pleased to have the night so 
quietly to myself. The wind had hauled 
a little ahead on the starboard bow, and 
was dry but chilly. I found a shelter 
near the fire-hole, and made myself snug 
for the night. The ship moved over 
the uneven sea with a gentle and crad- 
ling movement. The ponderous, or- 
ganic labours of the engine in her 
bowels occupied the mind, and prepared 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 3 I 

it for slumber. From time to time a 
heavier lurch would disturb me as I lay, 
and recall me to the obscure borders of 
consciousness ; or I heard, as it were 
through a veil, the clear note of the 
clapper on the brass and the beautiful 
sea-cry, 'All 's well ! ' I know nothing, 
whether for poetry or music, that can 
surpass the effect of these two syllables 
in the darkness of a night at sea. 

The day dawned fairly enough, and 
during the early part we had some pleas- 
ant hours to improve acquaintance in 
the open air ; but towards nightfall the 
wind freshened, the rain begin to fall, 
and the sea rose so high that it was 
difficult to keep one's footing on the 
deck. I have spoken of our concerts. 
We were indeed a musical ship's com- 
pany, and cheered our way into exile 
with the fiddle, the accordion, and the 
songs of all nations. Good, bad, or 
indifferent — Scottish, English, Irish, 



32 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

Russian, German or Norse, — the songs 
were received with generous applause. 
Once or twice, a recitation, very spirit- 
edly rendered in a powerful Scottish 
accent, varied the proceedings; and 
once we sought in vain to dance a quad- 
rille, eight men of us together, to the 
music of the violin. The performers 
were all humorous, frisky fellows, who 
loved to cut capers in private life; but 
as soon as they were arranged for the 
dance, they conducted themselves like 
so many mutes at a funeral. I have 
never seen decorum pushed so far; and 
as this was not expected, the quadrille 
was soon whistled down, and the dan- 
cers departed under a cloud. Eight 
Frenchmen, even eight Englishmen 
from another rank of society, would 
have dared to make some fun for them- 
selves and the spectators ; but the work- 
ing man, when sober, takes an extreme 
and even melancholy view of personal 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 33 

deportment. A fifth-form schoolboy 
is not more careful of dignity. He 
dares not be comical ; his fun must es- 
cape from him unprepared, and above 
all, it must be unaccompanied by any 
physical demonstration. I like his so- 
ciety under most circumstances, but let 
me never again join with him in public 
gambols. 

But the impulse to sing was strong, 
and triumphed over modesty and even 
the inclemencies of sea and sky. On 
this rough Saturday night, we got to- 
gether by the main deck-house, in a 
place sheltered from the wind and rain. 
Some clinging to a ladder which led to 
the hurricane deck, and the rest knitting 
arms or taking hands, we made a ring 
to support the women in the violent 
lurching of the ship ; and when we were 
thus disposed, sang to our hearts' con- 
tent. Some of the songs were appro- 
priate to the scene ; others strikingly 



34 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

the reverse. Bastard doggrel of the 
music-hall, such as, 'Around her splen- 
did form, I weaved the magic circle,' 
sounded bald, bleak, and pitifully silly. 
'We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, 
if we do,' was in some measure saved by 
the vigour and unanimity with which 
the chorus was thrown forth into the 
night. I observed a Platt-Deutsch 
mason, entirely innocent of English, 
adding heartily to the general effect. 
And perhaps the German mason is but 
a fair example of the sincerity with 
which the song was rendered ; for nearly 
all with whom I conversed upon the 
subject were bitterly opposed to war, 
and attributed their own misfortunes, 
and frequently their own taste for 
whisky, to the campaigns in Zululand 
and Afghanistan. 

Every now and again, however, some 
song that touched the pathos of our sit- 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 35 

uation was given forth ; and you could 
hear by the voices that took up the bur- 
den how the sentiment came home to 
each. 'The Anchor's Weighed' was 
true for us. We were indeed ' Rocked 
on the bosom of the stormy deep.' 
How many of us could say with the 
singer, 'I 'm lonely to-night, love, with- 
out you,' or 'Go, some one, and tell 
them from me, to write me a letter from 
home!' And when was there a more 
appropriate moment for 'Auld Lang 
Syne' than now, when the land, the 
friends, and the affections of that 
mingled but beloved time were fading 
and fleeing behind us in the vessel's 
wake ? It pointed forward to the hour 
when these labours should be overpast, 
to the return voyage, and to many a 
meeting in the sanded inn, when those 
who had parted in the spring of youth 
should again drink a cup of kindness in 



36 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

their age. Had not Burns contemplated 
emigration, I scarce believe he would 
have found that note. 

All Sunday the weather remained wild 
and cloudy; many were prostrated by 
sickness; only five sat down to tea in 
the second cabin, and two of these 
departed abruptly ere the meal was at an 
end. The Sabbath was observed strictly 
by the majority of the emigrants. I 
heard an old woman express her surprise 
that 'the ship didna gae doon,' as she 
saw some one pass her with a chess- 
board on the holy day. Some sang 
Scottish psalms. Many went to service, 
and in true Scottish fashion came back 
ill pleased with their divine. 'I didna 
think he was an experienced preacher,' 
said one girl to me. 

It was a bleak, uncomfortable day; 
but at night, by six bells, although the 
wind had not yet moderated, the clouds 
were all wrecked and blown away behind 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS. 37 

the rim of the horizon, and the stars 
came out thickly overhead. I saw Venus 
burning as steadily and sweetly across 
this hurly-burly of the winds and waters 
as ever at home upon the summer woods. 
The engine pounded, the screw tossed 
out of the water with a roar, and shook 
the ship from end to end ; the bows 
battled with loud reports against the 
billows : and as I stood in the lee-scup- 
pers and looked up to where the funnel 
leaned out, over my head, vomiting 
smoke, and the black and monstrous 
tops ils blotted, at each lurch, a differ- 
ent crop of stars, it seemed as if all this 
trouble were a thing of small account, 
and that just above the mast reigned 
peace unbroken and eternal. 



Steerage Scenes 



/^vUR companion (Steerage No. 2 
^-^ and 3) was a favourite resort. 
Down one flight of stairs there was a 
comparatively large open space, the 
center occupied by a hatchway, which 
made a convenient seat for about twenty 
persons, while barrels, coils of rope, 
and the carpenter's bench afforded 
perches for perhaps as many more. 
The canteen, or steerage bar, was on 
one side of the stair; on the other, 
a no less attractive spot, the cabin of 
the indefatigable interpreter. I have 
seen people packed into this space like 
herrings in a barrel, and many merry 
evenings prolonged there until five 
bells, when the lights were ruthlessly 
extinguished and all must go to roost. 
39 



40 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

It had been rumoured since Friday 
that there was a fiddler aboard, who lay- 
sick and unmelodious in Steerage No. 
i ; and on the Monday forenoon, as I 
came down the companion, I was saluted 
by something in Strathspey time. A 
white-faced Orpheus was cheerily play- 
ing to an audience of white-faced women. 
It was as much as he could do to play, 
and some of his hearers were scarce able 
to sit ; yet they had crawled from their 
bunks at the first experimental flourish, 
and found better than medicine in the 
music. Some of the heaviest heads 
began to nod in time, and a degree of 
animation looked from some of the pal- 
est eyes. Humanly speaking, it is a 
more important matter to play the fid- 
dle, even badly, than to write huge 
works upon recondite subjects. What 
could Mr. Darwin have done for these 
sick women ? But this fellow scraped 
away; and the world was positively a 



STEERAGE SCENES. 4 1 

better place for all who heard him. We 
have yet to understand the economical 
value of these mere accomplishments. 
I told the fiddler he was a happy man, 
carrying happiness about with him in 
his fiddle-case, and he seemed alive to 
the fact. 

'It is a privilege,' I said. He thought 
a while upon the word, turning it over 
in his Scots head, and then answered 
with conviction, 'Yes, a privilege.' 

That night I was summoned by 'Mer- 
rily danced the Quaker's wife' into the 
companion of Steerage No. 4 and 5. 
This was, properly speaking, but a strip 
across a deck-house, lit by a sickly lan- 
tern which swung to and fro with the 
motion of the ship. Through the open 
slide-door we had a glimpse of a grey 
night sea, with patches of phosphores- 
cent foam flying, swift as birds, into the 
wake, and the horizon rising and falling 
as the vessel rolled to the wind. In the 



.\2 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

center the companion ladder plumped 

down sheerlv like an open pit Below, 
on the first landing, and lighted by 

another lamp, lads ami lasses danced, 
not more than three at a time for laek of 
space, in jigs and reels and hornpipes. 
Above, on either side, there was a recess 
railed with iron, perhaps two feet wide 
and tour long, which stood for orchestra 
and seats of honour. In the one bal- 
cony, five slatternly Irish lasses sat 
woven in a comely group. In the other 
was posted Orpheus, his body, which 
wa^ convulsively in motion, forming an 
odd contrast to his somnolent, imper- 
turbable Scots face. His brother, a dark 
man with a vehement, interested coun- 
tenance, who made a god of the fiddler, 
sat by with open mouth, drinking in the 
general admiration and throwing out 
remarks to kindle it. 

'That 's a bonnv hornpipe now,' he 
would Say. 'it's a great favourite with 



STEERAGE SCENES. 43 

performers ; they dance the sand dance 
to it.' And he expounded the sand 
dance. Then suddenly, it would be a 
long ' Hush !' with uplifted finger and 
glowing, supplicating eyes; 'he's going 
to play "Auld Robin Gray" on one 
string ! ' And throughout this excruciat- 
ing movement, — 'On one string, that's 
on one string!' he kept crying. I 
would have given something myself that 
it had been on none; but the hearers 
were much awed. I called for a tune or 
two, and thus introduced myself to the 
notice of the brother, who directed his 
talk to me for some little while, keeping, 
I need hardly mention, true to his topic, 
like the seamen to the star. 'He's 
grand of it,' he said confidentially. 
'His master was a music-hall man.' 
Indeed the music-hall man had left his 
mark, for our fiddler was ignorant of 
many of our best old airs ; ' Logie o' 
Buchan,' for instance, he only knew as a 
4 



44 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT, 

quick, jigging figure in a set of qua- 
drilles, and had never heard it called by 
name. Perhaps, after all, the brother 
was the more interesting performer of 
the two. I have spoken with him after- 
wards repeatedly, and found him always 
the same quick, fiery bit of a man, not 
without brains ; but he never showed to 
such advantage as when he was thus 
squiring the fiddler into public note. 
There is nothing more becoming than 
a genuine admiration ; and it shares this 
with love, that it does not become con- 
temptible although misplaced. 

The dancing was but feebly carried 
on. The space was almost impractic- 
ably small ; and the Irish wenches com- 
bined the extreme of bashfulness about 
this innocent display with a surprising 
impudence and roughness of address. 
Most often, either the fiddle lifted up 
its voice unheeded, or only a couple 
of lads would be footing it and snap- 



STEERAGE SCENES. 45 

ping fingers on the landing. And such 
was the eagerness of the brother to dis- 
play all the acquirements of his idol, 
and such the sleepy indifference of the 
performer, that the tune would as often 
as not be changed, and the hornpipe 
expire into a ballad before the dancers 
had cut half a dozen shuffles. 

In the meantime, however, the audi- 
ence had been growing more and more 
numerous every moment ; there was 
hardly standing-room round the top of 
the companion ; and the strange 
instinct of the race moved some of the 
new-comers to close both the doors, so 
that the atmosphere grew insupportable. 
It was a good place, as the saying is, to 
leave. 

The wind hauled ahead with a head 
sea. By ten at night heavy sprays were 
flying and drumming over the fore- 
castle; the companion of Steerage No. 
i had to be closed, and the door of 



46 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

communication through the second 
cabin thrown open. Either from the 
convenience of the opportunity, or 
because we had already a number of 
acquaintances in that part of the ship, 
Mr. Jones and I paid it a late visit. 
Steerage No. i is shaped like an isos- 
celes triangle, the sides opposite the 
equal angles bulging outward with the 
contour of the ship. It is lined with 
eight pens of sixteen bunks apiece, four 
bunks below and four above on either 
side. At night the place is lit with two 
lanterns, one to each table. As the 
steamer beat on her way among the 
rough billows, the light passed through 
violent phases of change, and was 
thrown to and fro and up and down 
with startling swiftness. You were 
tempted to wonder, as you looked, how 
so thin a glimmer could control and 
disperse such solid blackness. When 
Jones and I entered we found a little 



STEERAGE SCENES. 47 

company of our acquaintances seated 
together at the triangular foremost 
table. A more forlorn party, in more 
dismal circumstances, it would be hard 
to imagine. The motion here in the 
ship's nose was very violent ; the uproar 
of the sea often overpoweringly loud. 
The yellow flicker of the lantern spun 
round and round and tossed the shad- 
ows in masses. The air was hot, but it 
struck a chill from its fcetor. From all 
round in the dark bunks, the scarcely 
human noises of the sick ioined into a 
kind of farmyard chorus. In the 
midst, these five friends of mine were 
keeping up what heart they could in 
company. Singing was their refuge 
from discomfortable thoughts and sen- 
sations. One piped, in feeble tones, 
' Oh why left I my hame ? ' which 
seemed a pertinent question in the 
circumstances. Another, from the in- 
visible horrors of a pen where he lay 



48 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

dog-sick upon the upper shelf, found 
courage, in a blink of his sufferings, to 
give us several verses of the ' Death of 
Nelson'; and it was odd and eerie to 
hear the chorus breathe feebly from all 
sorts of dark corners, and ' this day has 
done his dooty' rise and fall and be 
taken up again in this dim inferno, to 
an accompaniment of plunging, hollow- 
sounding bows and the rattling spray- 
showers overhead. 

All seemed unfit for conversation ; a 
certain dizziness had interrupted the 
activity of their minds ; and except to 
sing they were tongue-tied. There was 
present, however, one tall, powerful 
fellow of doubtful nationality, being 
neither quite Scotsman nor altogether 
Irish, but of surprising clearness of 
conviction on the highest problems. 
He had gone nearly beside himself on 
the Sunday, because of a general back- 
wardness to indorse his definition of 



STEERAGE SCENES. 49 

mind as 'a living, thinking substance 
which cannot be felt, heard, or seen ' — 
nor, I presume, although he failed to 
mention it, smelt. Now he came for- 
ward in a pause with another contribu- 
tion to our culture. 

'Just by way of change,' said he, I'll 
ask you a Scripture riddle. There 's 
profit in them too,' he added ungram- 
matically. 

This was the riddle — - 

' C and P 
Did agree 
To cut down C ; 
But C and P 
Could not agree 
Without the leave of G 
All the people cried to see 
The crueltie 
Of C and P.' 

Harsh are the words of Mercury after 
the songs of Apollo ! We were a long 
while over the problem, shaking our 
heads and gloomily wondering how a 



50 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

man could be such a fool ; but at length 
he put us out of suspense and divulged 
the fact that C and P stood for Caiaphas 
and Pontius Pilate. 

I think it must have been the riddle 
that settled us ; but the motion and the 
close air likewise hurried our departure. 
We had not been gone long, we heard 
next morning, ere two or even three 
out of the five fell sick. We thought it 
little wonder on the whole, for the sea 
kept contrary all night. I now made 
my bed upon the second cabin floor, 
where, although I ran the risk of being 
stepped upon, I had a free current of 
air, more or less vitiated indeed, and 
running only from steerage to steerage, 
but at least not stagnant ; and from this 
couch, as well as the usual sounds of a 
rough night at sea, the hateful cough- 
ing and retching of the sick and the 
sobs of children, I heard a man run 
wild with terror beseeching his friend 



STEERAGE SCENES. 5 I 

for encouragement. * The ship 's going 
down ! ' he cried with a thrill of agony. 
1 The ship 's going down ! ' he repeated, 
now in a blank whisper, now with his 
voice rising towards a sob ; and his 
friend might reassure him, reason with 
him, joke at him — all was in vain, and 
the old cry came back, 'The ship's 
going down!' There was something 
panicy and catching in the emotion of 
his tones; and I saw in a clear flash 
what an involved and hideous tragedy 
was a disaster to an emigrant ship. If 
this whole parishful of people came no 
more to land, into how many houses 
would the newspaper carry woe, and 
what a great part of the web of our 
corporate human life would be rent 
across for ever ! 

The next morning when I came on 
deck I found a new world indeed. The 
wind was fair; the sun mounted into a 
cloudless heaven; through great dark 



52 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

blue seas the ship cut a swathe of 
curded foam. The horizon was dotted 
all day with companionable sails, and 
the sun shone pleasantly on the long, 
heaving deck. 

We had many fine-weather diversions 
to beguile the time. There was a single 
chess-board and a single pack of cards. 
Sometimes as many as twenty of us 
would be playing dominoes for love. 
Feats of dexterity, puzzles for the intel- 
ligence, some arithmetical, some of the 
same order as the old problem of the 
fox and goose and cabbage, were always 
welcome; and the latter, I observed, 
more popular as well as more conspicu- 
ously well done than the former. We 
had a regular daily competition to guess 
the vessel's progress ; and twelve o'clock, 
when the result was published in the 
wheel-house, came to be a moment of 
considerable interest. But the interest 
was unmixed. Not a bet was laid upon 



STEERAGE SCENES. 53 

our guesses. From the Clyde to Sandy 
Hook I never heard a wager offered or 
taken. We had, besides, romps in 
plenty. Puss in the Corner, which we 
had rebaptized, in more manly style, 
Devil and four Corners, was my own 
favorite game ; but there were many 
who preferred another, the humor of 
which was to box a person's ears until 
he found out who had cuffed him. 

This Tuesday morning we were all 
delighted with the change of weather, 
and in the highest possible spirits. We 
got in a cluster like bees, sitting be- 
tween each other's feet under lee of the 
deck-houses. Stories and laughter went 
around. The children climbed about 
the shrouds. White faces appeared for 
the first time, and began to take on 
colour from the wind. I was kept hard 
at work making cigarettes for one ama- 
teur after another, and my less than 
moderate skill was heartily admired. 



54 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

Lastly, down sat the fiddler in our midst 
and began to discourse his reels, and 
jigs, and ballads, with now and then a 
voice or two to take up the air and 
throw in the interest of human speech. 
Through this merry and good-hearted 
scene there came three cabin passen- 
gers, a gentleman and two young ladies, 
picking their way with little gracious 
titters of indulgence, and a Lady-Boun- 
tiful air about nothing, which galled me 
to the quick. I have little of the radi- 
cal in social questions, and have always 
nourished an idea that one person was 
as good as another. But I began to be 
troubled by this episode. It was 
astonishing what insults these people 
managed to convey by their presence. 
They seemed to throw their clothes in 
our faces. Their eyes searched us all 
over for tatters and incongruities. A 
laugh was ready at their lips ; but they 
were too well-mannered to indulge it in 



STEERAGE SCENES. 55 

our hearing. Wait a bit, till they were 
all back in the saloon, and then hear 
how wittily they would depict the man- 
ners of the steerage. We were in truth 
very innocently, cheerfully, and sensibly 
engaged, and there was no shadow of 
excuse for the swaying elegant superi- 
ority with which these damsels passed 
among us, or for the stiff and waggish 
glances of their squire. Not a word was 
said ; only when they were gone Mac- 
kay sullenly damned their impudence 
under his breath ; but we were all con- 
scious of an icy influence and a dead 
break in the course of our enjoyment. 



Steerage Types 



TirE had a fellow on board, an Irish- 
* * American, for all the world like 
a beggar in a print by Callot ; one-eyed, 
with great, splay crow's-feet round the 
sockets ; a knotty squab nose coming 
down over his mustache ; a miraculous 
hat ; a shirt that had been white, ay, 
ages long ago ; an alpaca coat in its 
last sleeves ; and, without hyperbole, no 
buttons to his trousers. Even in these 
rags and tatters, the man twinkled all 
over with impudence like a piece of 
sham jewellery ; and I have heard him 
offer a situation to one of his fellow- 
passengers with the air of a lord. Noth- 
ing could overlie such a fellow; a kind 
of base success was written on his brow. 
He was then in his ill days ; but I can 
57 



58 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

imagine him in Congress with his mouth 

full of bombast and sawder. As we 

moved in the same circle, l was brought 
necessarily Into his society. I ^\o not 
think I ever heard him say anything 

that was true. kind, or interesting' ; but 
there was entertainment in the man's 
demeanour. You might eall him a 

half-educated Lrish Tigg. 

Our Russian made a remarkable con- 
trast to this impossible fellow, Rumours 
and legends were current in the steer- 
ages about his antecedents. Some said 
he was a Nihilist escaping ; others set 
him down tor a harmless spendthrift, 
who had squandered titty thousand rou- 
bles, and whose father had now des- 
patched him to America by way of pen- 
anee. lather tale might flourish in 
security : there was no contradiction to 
be feared, for the hero spoke not one 
word of English. 1 got on with him 
lumberinglv enough in broken German, 



STEERAGE TYPES. 59 

and learnt from his own lips that he had 
been an apothecary. He carried the 
photograph of his betrothed in a 
pocket-book, and remarked that it did 
not do her justice. The cut of his head 
stood out from among the passengers 
with an air of startling strangeness. 
The first natural instinct was to take 
him for a desperado ; but although the 
features, to our Western eyes, had a 
barbaric and unhomely cast, the eye 
both reassured and touched. It was 
large and very dark and soft, with an 
expression of dumb endurance, as if it 
had often looked on desperate circum- 
stances and never looked on them with- 
out resolution. 

He cried out when I used the word. 
'No, no,' he said, 'not resolution.' 

' The resolution to endure,' I ex- 
plained. 

And then he shrugged his shoulders, 
and said, <Ach, ja, 1 with gusto, like a 
5 



60 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

man who has been flattered in his 
favourite pretensions. Indeed, he was 
always hinting at some secret sorrow; 
and his life, he said, had been one of 
unusual trouble and anxiety ; so the 
legends of the steerage may have repre- 
sented at least some shadow of the 
truth. Once, and once only, he sang a 
song at our concerts; standing forth 
without embarrassment, his great stature 
somewhat humped, his long arms fre- 
quently extended, his Kalmuck head 
thrown backward. It was a suitable 
piece of music, as deep as a cow's bel- 
low and wild like the White Sea. He 
was struck and charmed by the freedom 
and sociality of our manners. At home, 
he said, no one on a journey would 
speak to him, but those with whom he 
would not care to speak ; thus uncon- 
sciously involving himself in the con- 
demnation of his countrymen. But 
Russia was soon to be changed ; the ice 



STEERAGE TYPES. 6 1 

of the Neva was softening under the sun 
of civilization ; the new ideas, l wie ein 
femes violin? were audible among the 
big empty drum notes of Imperial 
diplomacy ; and he looked to see a 
great revival, though with a somewhat 
indistinct and childish hope. 

We had a father and son who made a 
pair of Jacks-of-all-trades. It was the 
son who sang the ' Death of Nelson ' 
under such contrarious circumstances. 
He was by trade a shearer of ship 
plates ; but he could touch the organ, 
had led two choirs, and played the flute 
and piccolo in a professional string 
band. His repertory of songs was, 
besides, inexhaustible, and ranged im- 
partially from the very best to the very 
worst within his reach. Nor did he 
seem to make the least distinction 
between these extremes, but would 
cheerfully follow up 'Tom Bowling' 
with 'Around her splendid form.' 



62 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

The father, an old, cheery, small 
piece of manhood, could do everything 
connected with tinwork from one end 
of the process to the other, use almost 
every carpenter's tool, and make picture 
frames to boot. 'I sat down with silver 
plate every Sunday,' said he, ' and pic- 
tures on the wall. I have made enough 
money to be rolling in my carriage. 
But, sir,' looking at me unsteadily with 
his bright rheumy eyes, ' I was troubled 
with a drunken wife.' He took a hos- 
tile view of matrimony in consequence. 
' It 's an old saying,' he remarked : 
1 God made 'em, and the devil he mixed 
'em.' 

I think he was justified by his experi- 
ence. It was a dreary story. He would 
bring home three pounds on Saturday, 
and on Monday all the clothes would 
be in pawn. Sick of the useless strug- 
gle, he gave up a paying contract, and 
contended himself with small and ill- 



STEERAGE TYPES. 63 

paid jobs. 'A bad job was as good as 
a good job for me,' he said ; ' it all went 
the same way/ Once the wife showed 
signs of amendment ; she kept steady 
for weeks on end ; it was again worth 
while to labour and to do one's best. 
The husband found a good situation 
some distance from home, and, to make 
a little upon every hand, started the 
wife in a cook-shop ; the children were 
here and there, busy as mice; savings 
began to grow together in the bank, and 
the golden age of hope had returned 
again to that unhappy family. But one 
week my old acquaintance, getting 
earlier through with his work, came 
home on the Friday instead of the Sat- 
urday, and there was his wife to receive 
him reeling drunk. He ' took and 
gave her a pair o' black eyes,' for which 
I pardon him, nailed up the cook-shop 
door, gave up his situation, and resigned 
himself to a life of poverty, with the 



64 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

workhouse at the end. As the children 
came to their full age they fled the 
house, and established themselves in 
other countries; some did well, some 
not so well ; but the father remained at 
home alone with his drunken wife, all 
his sound-hearted pluck and varied 
accomplishments depressed and nega- 
tived. 

Was she dead now ? or, after all these 
years, had he broken the chain, and run 
from home like a schoolboy ? I could 
not discover which ; but here at least he 
was out on the adventure, and still one 
of the bravest and most youthful men 
on board. 

'Now, I suppose, I must put my old 
bones to work again,' said he; 'but I 
can do a turn yet.' 

And the son to whom he was going, 
I asked, was he not able to support him? 

1 Oh yes,' he replied. ' But I 'm never 
happy without a job on hand. And 



STEERAGE TYPES. 65 

I 'm stout ; I can eat a'most anything. 
You see no craze about me.' 

This tale of a drunken wife was paral- 
leled on board by another of a drunken 
father. He was a capable man, with a 
good chance in life ; but he had drunk 
up two thriving businesses like a bottle 
of sherry, and involved his sons along 
with him in ruin. Now they were on 
board with us, fleeing his disastrous 
neighbourhood. 

Total abstinence, like all ascetical 
conclusions, is unfriendly to the most 
generous, cheerful, and human parts of 
man ; but it could have adduced many 
instances and arguments from among 
our ship's company. I was one day 
conversing with a kind and happy 
Scotsman, running to fat and perspira- 
tion in the physical, but with a taste for 
poetry and a genial sense of fun. I had 
asked him his hopes in emigrating. 
They were like those of so many others, 



66 niK AifATEUR BMIQRAMT. 

vagUG and unfounded ; times wore bail 
at home ; they were said to have a turn 
fol the better in the States; ami a m.m 

could get on anywhere, he thought 

That was precisely the weak point of lbs 
position; tor it he could get on in 
America, Why COuld lie not do the same 

in Scotland ? But 1 never had the 
courage to use that argument, though it 

was often o\\ the tip of mv tongue, ami 
instead I agreed with him heai tilv. add- 
ing, with reckless originality, ' it" the 
man stuek to his work, and kept away 
from drink.' 

*Ah!' said he slowly, 'the drink! 
You see. that 's just mv tumble.' 

lie spoke with a simplicity that was 
touching, looking at me at the same 

time with something strange and timid 

in his eve. halt ashamed, halt-sorry, like 
a good Child who knows he should be 
beaten. You would have said he recog- 
nized a destiny to which he was born. 



STEERAGE TYP1 ( >7 

and accepted fix; consequences mildly. 
Like the merchant Abudah, be was 
at the same time fleeing from bis 
destiny and carrying it along with 
him, the whole at an expense of six 

guineas. 

As far as I saw, drink, idleness, and 
incompetency were the three great 

causes of emigration, and for all of 

them, and drink first and foremost, this 

trick of getiing transported overseas 
appears to me the silliest means of eure. 

You cannot run away from a weak; 
you must some time figlit it out or 
perish; and if that he SO, why not now, 
and where you stand ? Catlum nan ani- 
mani. Change Glenlivat for Jiourbon, 
and it is still whisky, only not so good. 
A sea-voyage will not give a man the 
nerve to put aside cheap pleasure ; emi- 
gration has to be done before we climb 
the vessel J an aim in life is the only 
fortune worth the finding ; and it is not 



68 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

to be found in foreign lands, but in the 
heart itself. 

Speaking generally, there is no vice 
of this kind more contemptible than 
another ; for each is but a result and out- 
ward sign of a soul tragically ship- 
wrecked. In the majority of cases, 
cheap pleasure is resorted to by way 
of anodyne. The pleasure-seeker sets 
forth upon life with high and difficult 
ambitions ; he meant to be nobly good 
and nobly happy, though at as little 
pains as possible to himself; and it 
is because all has failed in his celestial 
enterprise that you now behold him 
rolling in the garbage. Hence the 
comparative success of the teetotal 
pledge ; because to a man who had 
nothing it sets at least a negative aim 
in life. Somewhat as prisoners be- 
guile their days by taming a spider, the 
reformed drunkard makes an interest 
out of abstaining from intoxicating 



STEERAGE TYPES. 69 

drinks, and may live for that negation. 
There is something, at least, not to be 
done each day ; and a cold triumph 
awaits him every evening. 

We had one on board with us, whom 
I have already referred to under the 
name of Mackay, who seemed to me 
not only a good instance of this failure 
in life of which we have been speaking, 
but a good type of the intelligence 
which here surrounded me. Physically 
he was a small Scotsman, standing a 
little back as though he were already 
carrying the elements of a corporation, 
and his looks somewhat marred by the 
smallness of his eyes. Mentally, he 
was endowed above the average. There 
were but few subjects on which he could 
not converse with understanding and a 
dash of wit; delivering himself slowly 
and with gusto, like a man who enjoyed 
his own sententiousness. He was a 
dry, quick, pertinent debater, speaking 



yO THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

with a small voice, and swinging on his 
heels to launch and emphasize an argu- 
ment. When he began a discussion, 
he could not bear to leave it off, but 
would pick the subject to the bone, 
without once relinquishing a point. An 
engineer by trade, Mackay believed in 
the unlimited perfectibility of all ma- 
chines except the human machine. The 
latter he gave up with ridicule for a 
compound of carrion and perverse 
gases. He had an appetite for discon- 
nected facts which I can only compare 
to the savage taste for beads. What is 
called information was indeed a passion 
with the man, and he not only delighted 
to receive it, but could pay you back in 
kind. 

With all these capabilities, here was 
Mackay, already no longer young, on 
his way to a new country, with no pros- 
pects, no money, and but little hope. 
He was almost tedious in the cynical 



STEERAGE TYPES. 7 1 

disclosures of his despair. 'The ship 
may go down for me,' he would say, 
'now or to-morrow. I have nothing to 
lose and nothing to hope.' And again ; 
* I am sick of the whole damned per- 
formance.' He was, like the kind little 
man already quoted, another so-called 
victim of the bottle. But Mackay was 
miles from publishing his weakness to 
the world ; laid the blame of his failure 
on corrupt masters and a corrupt State 
policy ; and after he had been one night 
overtaken and had played the buffoon 
in his cups, sternly, though not without 
tact, suppressed all reference to his es- 
capade. It was a treat to see him man- 
age this ; the various jesters withered 
under his gaze, and you were forced to 
recognize in him a certain steely force, 
and a gift of command which might 
have ruled a senate. 

In truth it was not whisky that had 
ruined him ; he was ruined long before 



*]2 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

for all good human purposes but con- 
versation. His eyes were sealed by a 
cheap, school-book materialism. He 
could see nothing in the world but 
money and steam-engines. He did not 
know what you meant by the word hap- 
piness. He had forgotten the simple 
emotions of childhood, and perhaps 
never encountered the delights of youth. 
He believed in production, that useful 
figment of economy, as if it had been 
real like laughter ; and production, 
without prejudice to liquor, was his god 
and guide. One day he took me to 
task — a novel cry to me — upon the 
over-payment of literature. Literary 
men, he said, were more highly paid 
than artisans ; yet the artisan made 
threshing-machines and butter-churns, 
and the man of letters, except in the 
way of a few useful handbooks, made 
nothing worth the while. He produced 
a mere fancy article. Mackay's notion 



STEERAGE TYPES. 73 

of a book was Hoppus's Measurer. Now 
in my time I have possessed and even 
studied that work ; but if I were to be 
left to-morrow on Juan Fernandez, 
Hoppus's is not the book that I should 
choose for my companion volume. 

I tried to fight the point with Mackay. 
I made him own that he had taken 
pleasure in reading books otherwise, to 
his view, insignificant ; but he was too 
wary to advance a step beyond the 
admission. It was in vain for rne to 
argue that here was pleasure ready-made 
and running from the spring, whereas 
his ploughs and butter-churns were but 
means and mechanisms to give men the 
necessary food and leisure before they 
start upon the search for pleasure; he 
jibbed and ran away from such conclu- 
sions. The thing was different, he 
declared, and nothing was serviceable 
but what had to do with food. 'Eat, 
eat, eat!' he cried; 'that's the bottom 



74 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

and the top.' By as odd irony of cir- 
cumstance, he grew so much interested 
in this discussion that he let the hour 
slip by unnoticed and had to go without 
his tea. lie had enough sense ami 
humour, indeed he had no laek of either, 
to have chuckled over this himself in 
private; and even to me he referred to 
it with the shadow of a smile. 

Mackay was a hot bigot He would 
not hear of religion. I have seen him 
waste hours of time in argument with all 
sort of poor human creatures who under- 
stood neither him nor themselves, and 
he had had the boyishness to dissect and 
criticise even so small a matter as the 
fiddler's definition of mind. He snorted 
aloud with zealotry and the lust for 
intellectual battle. Anything, whatever 
it was. that seemed to him likely to dis- 
courage the continued passionate pro- 
duction o( corn and steam-engines he 
resented like a conspiracy against the 



stkkraok -jvi-hs. 75 

people. Thus, when I put in the plea 

for literature, that it was only in good 

books, or in the society of the good, that 

a mail COUld get help in his conduct, lie 
declared I iraa in a different world from 
him. 'Damn my conduct!' said he. 
M have given it up for a bad job. My 
question is, 'Can I drive a nail ? ' And 
he plainly looked upon me aa our; who 
was insidiously seeking to reduce the 
people's annual bellyful of eorn and 
steam engines. 

It may be argued that these opinions 
spring from the defect of culture; that 
a narrow and pinching way of life not 
only exaggerates to a man the impor- 
tance of material conditions, but indi- 
rectly, by denying him the necessary 
books and leisure, keeps his mind ignor- 
ant of larger thoughts ; and that hence 
Springs this overwhelming concern 
about diet, and hence the bald view of 
existence professed by Mackay. Had 
6 



j6 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

this been an English peasant the con- 
clusion would be tenable. But Mackay 
had most of the elements of a liberal 
education. He had skirted metaphysi- 
cal and mathematical studies. He had 
a thoughtful hold of what he knew, 
which would be exceptional among 
bankers. He had been brought up in 
the midst of hot-house piety, and told, 
with incongruous pride, the story of his 
own brother's deathbed ecstasies. Yet 
he had somehow failed to fulfil himself, 
and was adrift like a dead thing among 
external circumstances, without hope or 
lively preference or shaping aim. And 
further, there seemed a tendency among 
many of his fellows to fall into the same 
blank and unlovely opinions. ' One 
thing, indeed, is not to be learned in 
Scotland, and that is the way to. be 
happy. Yet that is the whole of culture, 
and perhaps two-thirds of morality. 
Can it be that the Puritan school, by 



STEERAGE TYPES. T] 

divorcing a man from nature, by thin- 
ning out his instincts, and setting a stamp 
of its disapproval on whole fields of 
human activity and interest, leads at 
last directly to material greed ? 

Nature is a good guide through life, 
and the love of simple pleasures next, if 
not superior, to virtue ; and we had on 
board an Irishman who based his claim 
to the widest and most affectionate pop- 
ularity precisely upon these two quali- 
ties, that he was natural and happy. 
He boasted a fresh colour, a tight little 
figure, unquenchable gaiety, and indefat- 
igable good-will. His clothes puzzled 
the diagnostic mind, until you heard he 
had been once a private coachman, when 
they became eloquent and seemed a part 
of his biography. His face contained 
the rest, and, I fear, a prophecy of the 
future ; the hawk's nose above accorded 
so ill with the pink baby's mouth below. 
His spirit and his pride belonged, you 



78 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

might say, to the nose ; while it was the 
general shiftlessness expressed by the 
other that had thrown him from situa- 
tion to situation, and at length on board 
the emigrant ship. Barney ate, so to 
speak, nothing from the galley ; his own 
tea, butter and eggs supported him 
throughout the voyage ; and about meal- 
time you might often find him up to the 
elbows in amateur cookery. His was 
the first voice heard singing among all 
the passengers ; he was the first who fell 
to dancing. From Loch Foyle to Sandy 
Hook, there was not a piece of fun 
undertaken but there was Barney in the 
midst. 

You ought to have seen him when he 
stood up to sing at our concerts — his tight 
little figure stepping to and fro, and 
his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seek- 
ing and bestowing encouragement — and 
to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely cal- 
culated between jest and earnest, between 



STEERAGE TYPES. 79 

grace and clumsiness, with which he 
brought each song to a conclusion. He 
was not only a great favourite among 
ourselves, but his songs attracted the 
lords of the saloon, who often leaned to 
hear him over the rails of the hurricane- 
deck. He was somewhat pleased, but 
not at all abashed by this attention ; and 
one night, in the midst of his famous 
performance of 'Billy Keogh,' I saw him 
spin half round in a pirouette and throw 
an audacious wink to an old gentleman 
above. 

This was the more characteristic, as, 
for all his daffing, he was a modest and 
very polite little fellow among ourselves. 

He would not have hurt the feelings 
of a fly, nor throughout the passage did 
he give a shadow of offense ; yet he was 
always, by his innocent freedoms and 
love of fun, brought upon that narrow 
margin where politeness must be natural 
to walk without a fall. He was once 



80 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

seriously angry, and that in a grave, 
quiet manner, because they supplied no 
fish on Friday ; for Barney was a con- 
scientious Catholic. He had likewise 
strict notions of refinement j and when, 
late one evening, after the women had 
retired, a young Scotsman struck up an 
indecent song, Barney's drab clothes 
were immediately missing from the 
group. His taste was for the society of 
gentlemen, of whom, with the reader's 
permission, there was no lack in our five 
steerages and second cabin ; and he 
avoided the rough and positive with a 
girlish shrinking. Mackay, partly from 
his superior powers of mind, which ren- 
dered him incomprehensible, partly from 
his extreme opinions, was especially dis- 
tasteful to the Irishman. I have seen 
him slink off with backward looks of 
terror and offended delicacy, while the 
other, in his witty, ugly way, had been 



STEERAGE TYPES. 8 I 

professing hostility to God, and an 
extreme theatrical readiness to be ship- 
wrecked on the spot. These utterances 
hurt the little coachman's modesty like 
a bad word. 



The Sick Man 



f~\ N E night Jones, the young 
^S O'Reilly, and myself were walk- 
ing arm-in-arm and briskly up and 
down the deck. Six bells had rung ; a 
head-wind blew chill and fitful, the fog 
was closing in with a sprinkle of rain, 
and the fog-whistle had been turned on, 
and now divided time with its unwel- 
come outcries, loud like a bull, thrilling 
and intense like a mosquito. Even the 
watch lay somewhere snugly out of sight. 
For some time we observed some- 
thing lying black and huddled in the 
scuppers, which at last heaved a little 
and moaned aloud. We ran to the 
rails. An elderly man, but whether 
passenger or seaman it was impossible 
in the darkness to determine, lay grovel- 
83 



84 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

ling on his belly in the wet scuppers, 
and kicking feebly with his outspread 
toes. We asked him what was amiss, 
and he replied incoherently, with a 
strange accent and in a voice unmanned 
by terror, that he had cramp in the 
stomach, that he had been ailing all 
day, had seen the doctor twice, and had 
walked the deck against fatigue till he 
was overmastered and had fallen where 
we found hi in. 

Jones remained by his side, while 
O'Reilly and I hurried off to seek the 
doctor. We knocked in vain at the 
doctor's cabin ; there came no reply ; 
nor could we find any one to guide us. 
It was no time for delicacy; so we ran 
once more forward ; and I, whipping 
up a ladder and touching my hat to the 
officer of the watch, addressed him as 
politely as I could : 

' I beg your pardon, sir ; but there is 
a man lying bad with cramp in the 



THE SICK MAN. 85 

lee scuppers; and I can't find the 
doctor.' 

He looked at me peeringly in the 
darkness; and then, somewhat harshly, 
' Well, / can't leave the bridge, my man,' 
said he. 

'No, sir; but you can tell me what to 
do,' I returned. 

'Is it one of the crew?' he asked. 

'I believe him to be a fireman,' I 
replied. 

I daresay officers are much annoyed 
by complaints and alarmist information 
from their freight of human creatures ; 
but certainly, whether it was the idea 
that the sick man was one of the crew, 
or from something conciliatory in my 
address, the officer in question was im- 
mediately relieved and mollified ; and 
speaking in a voice much freer from 
constraint, advised me to find a steward 
and despatch him in quest of the doctor, 
who would now be in the smoking-room 
over his pipe. 



86 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

One of the stewards was often enough 
to be found about this hour down our 
companion, Steerage No. 2 and 3 ; that 
was his smoking-room of a night. Let 
me call him Blackwood. O'Reilly and 
I rattled down the companion, breath- 
ing hurry ; and in his shirt-sleeves and 
perched across the carpenter's bench 
upon one thigh, found Blackwood ; a 
neat, bright, dapper, Glasgow-looking 
man, with a bead of an eye and a rank 
twang in his speech. I forget who was 
with him, but the pair were enjoying a 
deliberate talk over their pipes. I dare- 
say he was tired with his day's work, 
and eminently comfortable at that mo- 
ment ; and the truth is I did not stop 
to consider his feelings, but told my 
story in a breath. 

'Steward,' said 1, ' there's a man lying 
bad with cramp, and I can't find the 
doctor.' 

He turned upon me as pert as a spar- 



THE SICK MAN. 87 

row, but with a black look that is the 
prerogative of man ; and taking his pipe 
out of his mouth — 

'That's none of my business,' said 
he. ' I don't care.' 

I could have strangled the little ruf- 
fian where he sat. The thought of his 
cabin civility and cabin tips filled me 
with indignation. I glanced at O'Reilly ; 
he was pale and quivering, and looked 
like assault and battery, every inch of 
him. But we had a better card than 
violence. 

* You will have to make it your busi- 
ness,' said I, 'for I am sent to you by 
the officer on the bridge.' 

Blackwood was fairly tripped. He 
made no answer, but put out his pipe, 
gave me one murderous look, and set 
off upon his errand strolling. From 
that day forward, I should say, he 
improved to me in courtesy, as though 
he had repented his evil speech and 



88 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

were anxious to leave a better impres- 
sion. 

When we got on deck again, Jones 
was still beside the sick man ; and two 
or three late stragglers had gathered 
round and were offering suggestions. 
One proposed to give the patient water, 
which was promptly negatived. Another 
bade us hold him up ; he himself 
prayed to be let lie ; but as it was at 
least as well to keep him off the stream- 
ing decks, O'Reilly and I supported 
him between us. It was only by main 
force that we did so, and neither an 
easy nor an agreeable duty ; for he 
fought in his paroxysms like a fright- 
ened child, and moaned miserably when 
he resigned himself to our control. 

'O let me lie!' he pleaded. 'I'll 
no' get better anyway.' And then, with 
a moan that went to my heart, ' O why 
did I come upon this miserable jour- 
ney?' 



THE SICK MAN. 89 

I was reminded of the song which I 
had heard a little while before in the 
close, tossing steerage ; ' O why left I 
my hame ? ' 

Meantime Jones, relieved of his im- 
mediate charge, had gone off to the gal- 
ley, where we could see a light. There 
he found a belated cook scouring pans 
by the radiance of two lanterns, and one 
of these he sought to borrow. The 
scullion was backward. ' Was it one of 
the crew ? ' he asked. And when Jones, 
smitten with my theory, had assured 
that it was a fireman, he reluctantly left 
his scouring and came towards us at an 
easy pace, with one of the lanterns 
swinging from his finger. The light, as 
it reached the spot, showed us an elderly 
man, thick-set, and grizzled with years; 
but the shifting and coarse shadows con- 
cealed from us the expression and even 
the design of his face. 



90 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

So soon as the cook set eyes on him 
he gave a sort of whistle. 

'// ' s only a passenger! ' said he ; and 
turning about, made, lantern and all, 
for the galley. 

'He'sa man anyway,' cried Jones in 
indignation. 

'Nobody said he was a woman,' said 
a gruff voice, which I recognised for 
that of the bo's'un. 

All this while there was no word of 
Blackwood or the doctor ; and now the 
officer came to our side of the ship and 
asked, over the hurricane-deck rails, if 
the doctor were not yet come. We told 
him not. 

' No ? ' he repeated with a breathing 
of anger ; and we saw him hurry aft in 
person. 

Ten minutes after the doctor made 
his appearance deliberately enough and 
examined our patient with the lantern. 



THE SICK MAN. 91 

He made little of the case, had the man 
brought aft to the dispensary, dosed 
him, and sent him forward to his bunk. 
Two of his neighbours in the steerage 
had now come to our assistance, express- 
ing loud sorrow that such ' a fine cheery 
body' should be sick; and these, claim- 
ing a sort of possession, took him en- 
tirely under their own care. The drug 
had probably relieved him, for he strug- 
gled no more, and was led along plain- 
tive and patient, but protesting. His 
heart recoiled at the thought of the 
steerage. « O let me lie down upon the 
bieldy side,' he cried ; ' O dinna take 
me down ! ' And again : < O why did 
ever I come upon this miserable voy- 
age ? ' And yet once more, with a gasp 
and a wailing prolongation of the fourth 
word : 'I had no call to come.' But 
there he was; and by the doctor's 
orders and the kind force of his two 
shipmates disappeared down the com- 
7 



92 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

panion of Steerage No. i into the den 
allotted him. 

At the foot of our own companion, 
just where I found Blackwood, Jones 
and the bo's'un were now engaged in 
talk. This last was a gruff, cruel-look- 
ing seaman, who must have passed near 
half a century upon the seas ; square- 
headed, goat-bearded, with heavy blonde 
eyebrows, and an eye without radiance, 
but inflexibly steady and hard. I had not 
forgotten his rough speech ; but I re- 
membered also that he had helped us 
about the lantern ; and now seeing him 
in conversation with Jones, and being 
choked with indignation, I proceeded 
to blow off my steam. 

'Well,' said I, ' I make you my com- 
pliments upon your steward,' and furi- 
ously narrated what had happened. 

'I've nothing to do with him,' re- 
plied the bo's'un. 'They're all alike. 
They wouldn't mind if they saw you 



THE SICK MAN. 93 

all lying dead one upon the top of 
another.' 

This was enough. A very little hu- 
manity went a long way with me after 
the experience of the evening. A sym- 
pathy grew up at once between the 
boYun and myself; and that night, and 
during the next few days, I learned to 
appreciate him better. He was a re- 
markable type, and not at all the kind 
of man you find in books. He had 
been at Sebastopol under English 
colours; and again in a States ship, 
'after the Alabama, and praying God 
we shouldn't find her.' He was a high 
Tory and a high Englishman. No 
manufacturer could have held opinions 
more hostile to the working man and 
his strikes. 'The workmen,' he said, 
'think nothing of their country. They 
think of nothing but themselves. 
They 're damned greedy, selfish fellows.' 
He would not hear of the decadence of 



94 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

England. ' They say they send us beet 
from America,' he argued ; ' but who 
pays for it ? All the money in the 
world 's in England.' The Royal Navy 
was the best of possible services, accord- 
ing to him. 'Anyway the officers are 
gentlemen,' said he ; ' and you can't get 
hazed to death by a damned non-com- 
missioned as you can in the 

army.' Among nations, England was 
the first ; then came France. He 
respected the French navy and liked 
the French people ; and if he were 
forced to make a new choice in life, ' by 
God, he would try Frenchmen ! ' For 
all his looks and rough, cold manners, 
I observed that children were never 
frightened by him ; they divined him 
at once to be a friend ; and one 
night when he had chalked his hand 
and went about stealthily setting his 
mark on people's clothes, it was incon- 
gruous to hear this formidable old 



THE SICK MAN. 95 

salt chuckling over his boyish monkey 
trick. 

In the morning, my first thought was 
of the sick man. I was afraid I should 
not recognise him, so baffling had been 
the light of the lantern ; and found 
myself unable to decide if he were 
Scots, English, or Irish. He had cer- 
tainly employed north-country words 
and elisions; but the accent and the 
pronunciation seemed unfamiliar and 
incongruous in my ear. 

To descend on an empty stomach 
into Steerage No. i, was an adventure 
that required some nerve. The stench 
was atrocious; each respiration tasted 
in the throat like some horrible kind of 
cheese; and the squalid aspect of the 
place was aggravated by so many people 
worming themselves into their clothes 
in the twilight of the bunks. You may 
guess if I was pleased, not only for him, 
but for myself also, when I heard that 



96 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

the sick man was better and had gone 
on deck. 

The morning was raw and foggy, 
though the sun suffused the fog with 
pink and amber; the fog-horn still 
blew, stertorous and intermittent; and 
to add to the discomfort, the seamen 
were just beginning to wash down the 
decks. But for a sick man this was 
heaven compared to the steerage. I 
found him standing on the hot- water 
pipe, just forward of the saloon deck 
house. He was smaller than I had fan- 
cied, and plain-looking; but his face 
was distinguished by strange and fasci- 
nating eyes, limpid grey from a distance, 
but, when looked into, full of changing 
colours and grains of gold. His man- 
ners were mild and uncompromisingly 
plain; and I soon saw that, when once 
started, he delighted to talk. His ac- 
cent and language had been formed in 
the most natural way, since he was born 



THE SICK MAN. 97 

in Ireland, had lived a quarter of a cen- 
tury on the banks of Tyne, and was 
married to a Scots wife. A fisherman 
in the season, he had fished the east 
coast from Fisherrow to Whitby. When 
the season was over, and the great 
boats, which required extra hands, were 
once drawn up on shore till the next 
spring, he worked as a labourer about 
chemical furnaces, or along the wharves 
unloading vessels. In this compara- 
tively humble way of life he had gath- 
ered a competence, and could speak of his 
comfortable house, his hayfield, and his 
garden. On this ship, where so many 
accomplished artisans were fleeing from 
starvation, he was present on a pleasure 
trip to visit a brother in New York. 

Ere he started, he informed me, he 
had been warned against the steerage 
and the steerage fare, and recommended 
to bring with him a ham and tea and a 
spice loaf. But he laughed to scorn 



98 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

such counsels. 'I'm not afraid,' he had 
told his adviser, '77/ get on for ten 
days. I've not been a fisherman for 
nothing.' For it is no light matter, as 
he reminded me, to be in an open boat, 
perhaps waist-deep with herrings, day- 
breaking with a scowl, and for miles on 
every hand lee-shores, unbroken, iron- 
bound, surf-beat, with only here and 
there an anchorage where you dare not 
lie, or a harbour impossible to enter 
with the wind that blows. The life of 
a North Sea fisher is one long chapter 
of exposure and hard work and insuffi- 
cient fare; and even if he makes land at 
some bleak fisher port, perhaps the sea- 
son is bad or his boat has been unlucky, 
and after fifty hours' unsleeping vigi- 
lance and toil, not a shop will give him 
credit for a loaf of bread. Yet the 
steerage of the emigrant ship had been 
too vile for the endurance of a man 
thus rudely trained. He had scarce 



THE SICK MAN. 99 

eaten since he came on board, until the 
day before, when his appetite was tempted 
by some excellent pea soup. We were 
all much of the same mind on board, 
and beginning with myself, had dined 
upon pea-soup not wisely but too well; 
only with him the excess had been 
punished, perhaps because he was weak- 
ened by former abstinence, and his first 
meal had resulted in a cramp. He had 
determined to live henceforth on bis- 
cuit; and when, two months later, he 
should return to England, to make the 
passage by saloon. The second cabin, 
after due inquiry, he scouted as another 
edition of the steerage. 

He spoke apologetically of his emo- 
tion when ill. ' Ye see, I had no call 
to be here,' said he; 'and I thought it 
was by with me last night. I 've a good 
house at home, and plenty to nurse me, 
and I had no real call to leave them.' 
Speaking of the attentions he had 



100 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

received from his shipmates generally, 
* they were all so kind,' he said, * that 
there 's none to mention.' And except 
in so far as I might share in this, he 
troubled me with no reference to my 
services. 

But what affected me in the most 
lively manner was the wealth of this 
day-labourer, paying a two months' 
pleasure visit to the States, and prepar- 
ing to return in the saloon, and the new 
testimony rendered by his story, not so 
much to the horrors of the steerage as 
to the habitual comfort of the working 
classes. One foggy, frosty December 
evening, I encounted on Liberton Hill, 
near Edinburgh, an Irish laborer trudg- 
ing homeward from the fields. Our 
roads lay together, and it was natural 
that we should fall into talk. He was 
covered with mud; an inoffensive, ignor- 
ant creature, who thought the Atlantic 
Cable was a secret contrivance of the 



THE SICK MAN. 101 

masters the better to oppress labouring 
mankind; and I confess I was aston- 
ished to learn that he had nearly three 
hundred pounds in the bank. But this 
man had travelled over most of the 
world, and enjoyed wonderful opportuni- 
ties on some American railroad, with 
two dollars a shift and double pay on 
Sunday and at night; whereas my fel- 
low-passenger had never quitted Tyne- 
side, and had made all that he possessed 
in that same accursed, down-falling 
England, whence skilled mechanics, 
engineers, millwrights and carpenters 
were fleeing as from the native country 
of starvation. 

Fitly enough, we slid off on the sub- 
ject of strikes and wages and hard 
times. Being from the Tyne, and a 
man who had gained and lost in his 
own pocket by these fluctuations, he 
had much to say, and held strong opin- 



102 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

ions on the subject. He spoke sharply 
of the masters, and, when I led him on, 
of the men also. The masters had been 
selfish and obstructive; the men selfish, 
silly, and light-headed. He rehearsed 
to me the course of a meeting at which 
he had been present, and the somewhat 
long discourse which he had there pro- 
nounced, calling into question the wis- 
dom and even the good faith of the 
Union delegates; and although he had 
escaped himself through flush times and 
starvation times with a handsomely pro- 
vided purse, he had so little faith in 
either man or master, and so profound 
a terror for the unerring Nemesis of 
mercantile affairs, that he could think 
of no hope for our country outside 
of a sudden and complete political 
subversion. Down must go Lords 
and Church and Army; and capital, by 
some happy direction, must change 



THE SICK MAN. 103 

hands from worse to better, or England 
stood condemned. Such principles, he 
said, were growing ' like a seed.' 

From this mild, soft, domestic man, 
these words sounded unusually ominous 
and grave. I had heard enough revo- 
lutionary talk among my workmen 
fellow-passengers ; but most of it was 
hot and turgid, and fell discredited 
from the lips of unsuccessful men. This 
man was calm ; he had attained pros- 
perity and ease ; he disapproved the 
policy which had been pursued by labor 
in the past; and yet this was his pan- 
acea, — to rend the old country from 
end to end, and from top to bottom, 
and in clamor and civil discord remodel 
it with the hand of violence. 



The Stowaways 



/^\N the Sunday, among a party of 
^-^ men who were talking in our 
companion, Steerage No. 2 and 3, we 
remarked a new figure. He wore tweed 
clothes, well enough made if not very 
fresh, and a plain smoking-cap. His 
face was pale, with pale eyes, and spirit- 
edly enough designed ; but though not 
yet thirty, a sort of blackguardly de- 
generation had already overtaken his 
features. The fine nose had grown 
fleshy towards the point, the pale eyes 
were sunk in fat. His hands were strong 
and elegant ; his experience of life evi- 
dently varied ; his speech full of pith 
and verve ; his manners forward, but 
perfectly presentable. The lad who 
helped in the second cabin told me, in 
105 



106 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. . 

answer to a question, that he did not 
know who he was, but thought, ' by his 
way of speaking, and because he was so 
polite, that he was some one from the 
saloon.' 

I was not so sure, for to me there was 
something equivocal in his air and bear- 
ing. He might have been, I thought, 
the son of some good family who had 
fallen early into dissipation and run 
from home. But, making every allow- 
ance, how admirable was his talk ! I 
Wish you could have heard him tell his 
own stories. They were so swingingly 
set forth, in such dramatic language, 
and illustrated here and there by such 
luminous bits of acting, that they could 
only lose in any reproduction. There 
were tales of the P. and O. Company, 
Vvhere he had been an officer ; of the 
East Indies, where in former years he 
had lived lavishly ; of the Royal Engi- 
neers, where he had served for a period; 



THE STOWAWAYS. i y 

and of a dozen other sides of life, each 
introducing some vigorous thumb-nail 
portrait. He had the talk to himself 
that night, we were all so glad to listen. 
The best talkers usually address them- 
selves to some particular society ; there 
they are kings, elsewhere camp-follow- 
ers, as a man may know Russian and 
yet be ignorant of Spanish; but this 
fellow had a frank, headlong power of 
style, and a broad, human choice of 
subject, that would have turned any 
circle in the world into a circle of 
hearers. He was a Homeric talker 
plain, strong, and cheerful j and the 
things and the people of which he spoke 
became readily and clearly present to 
the minds of those who heard him 
This, with a certain added coloring of 
rhetoric and rodomontade, must have 
been the style of Burns, who equally 
charmed the ears of duchesses and 
hostlers. 



8 



108 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

Yet freely and personally as he spoke, 
many points remained obscure in his 
narration. The Engineers, for instance, 
was a service which he praised highly ; 
it is true there would be trouble with 
the sergeants ; but then the officers were 
gentlemen, and his own, in particular, 
one among ten thousand. It sounded 
so far exactly like an episode in the 
rakish, topsy-turvy life of such an one 
as I had imagined. But then there 
came incidents more doubtful, which 
showed an almost impudent greed after 
gratuities, and a truly impudent disre- 
gard for truth. And then there was the 
tale of his departure. He had wearied, 
it seems, of Woolwich, and one fine 
day, with a companion, slipped up to 
London for a spree. I have a suspicion 
that spree was meant to be a long one ; 
but God disposes all things ; and one 
morning, near Westminster Bridge, 
whom should he come across but the 



THE STOWAWAYS. IO9 

very sergeant who had recruited him at 
first! What followed? He himself 
indicated cavalierly that he had then re- 
signed. Let us put it so. But these 
resignations are sometimes very trying. 

At length, after having delighted us 
for hours, he took himself away from 
the companion ; and I could ask Mackay 
who and what he was. 'That?' said 
Mackay. ' Why, that 's one of the stow- 
aways.' 

'No man,' said the same authority, 
'who has had anything to do with the 
sea, would ever think of paying for a 
passage.' I give the statement as 
Mackay's, without endorsement ; yet I 
am tempted to believe that it contains a 
grain of truth ; and if you add that the 
man shall be impudent and thievish, or 
else dead-broke, it may even pass for a 
fair representation of the facts. We 
gentlemen of England who live at home 
at ease have, I suspect very insufficient 



110 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

ideas on the subject. All the world 
over, people are stowing away in coal- 
holes and dark corners, and when ships 
are once out to sea, appearing again, 
begrimed and bashful, upon deck. The 
career of these sea-tramps partakes 
largely of the adventurous. Thay may 
be poisoned by coal-gas, or die by 
starvation in their place of concealment; 
or when found they may be clapped at 
once and ignominiously into irons, thus 
to be carried to their promised land, 
the port of destination, and alas ! 
brought back in the same way to that 
from which they started, and there de- 
livered over to the magistrates and the 
seclusion of a county jail. Since I 
crossed the Atlantic, one miserable 
stowaway was found in a dying state 
among the fuel, uttered but a word or 
two, and departed for a farther country 
than America. 

When the stowaway appears on deck, 



THE STOWAWAYS. Ill 

he has but one thing to pray for ; that 
he be set to work, which is the price 
and sign of his forgiveness. After half 
an hour with a swab or a bucket, he 
feels himself as secure as if he had paid 
for his passage. It is not altogether a 
bad thing for the company, who get 
more or less efficient hands for nothing 
but a few plates of junk and duff ; and 
every now and again find themselves 
better paid than by a whole family of 
cabin passengers. Not long ago, for 
instance, a packet was saved from nearly 
certain loss by the skill and courage of 
a stowaway engineer. As was no more 
than just a handsome subscription re- 
warded him for his success ; but even 
without such exceptional good fortune, 
as things stand in England and America, 
the stowaway will often make a good 
profit out of his adventure. Four engi- 
neers stowed away last summer on the 
same ship, the Cir cassia; and before two 



112 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

days after their arrival each of the four 
had found a comfortable berth. This 
was the most hopeful tale of emigration 
that I heard from first to last ; and as 
you see, the luck was for stowaways. 

My curiosity was much inflamed by 
what I heard ; and the next morning, 
as I was making the round of the ship, 
I was delighted to find the ex-Royal 
Engineer engaged in washing down the 
white paint of a deck-house. There 
was another fellow at work beside him, 
a lad not more than twenty, in the most 
miraculous tatters, his handsome face 
sown with grains of beauty and lighted 
up by expressive eyes. Four stowaways 
had been found aboard our ship before 
she left the Clyde, but these two had 
alone escaped the ignominy of being put 
ashore. Alick, my acquaintance of last 
night, was Scots by birth, and by trade 
a practical engineer ; the other was from 
Devonshire, and had been to sea before 



THE STOWAWAYS. II3 

the mast. Two people more unlike by- 
training, character, and habits, it would 
be hard to imagine ; yet here they were 
together, scrubbing paint. 

Alick had held all sorts of good situ- 
ations, and wasted many opportunities 
in life. I have heard him end a story 
with these words : ' That was in my golden 
days, when I used finger-glasses.' Situa- 
tion after situation failed him ; then 
followed the depression of trade, and 
for months he had hung round with 
other idlers, playing marbles all day in 
the West Park, and going home at 
night to tell his landlady how he had 
been seeking for a job. I believe this 
kind of existence was not unpleasant to 
Alick himself, and he might have long 
continued to enjoy idleness and a life 
on tick ; but he had a comrade, let us 
call him Brown, who grew restive. This 
fellow was continually threatening to 
slip his cable for the States, and at last, 



114 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

i 

one Wednesday, Glasgow was left wid- 
owed of her Brown. Some months 
afterwards, Alick met another old chum 
in Sauchiehall Street. 

'By the by, Alick,' said he, ' I met a 
gentleman in New York who was asking 
for you.' 

' Who was that?' asked Alick. 
'The new second engineer on board 
the So-and-so,' was the reply. 
'Well, and who is he?' 
' Brown, to be sure.' 
For Brown had been one of the fortu- 
nate quartette aboard the Cir cassia. If 
that was the way of it in the States, 
Alick thought it was high time to fol- 
low Brown's example. He spent his 
last day, as he put it, 'reviewing the 
yeomanry,' and the next morning says 
he to his landlady, 'Mrs. X., I'll not 
take porridge to-day, please ; I '11 take 
some eggs.' 



THE STOWAWAYS. I 15 

'Why, have you found a job?' she 
asked, delighted. 

'Well, yes,' returned the perfidious 
Alick ; 'I think I '11 start to-day.' 

And so, well lined with eggs, start he 
did, but for America. I am afraid that 
landlady has seen the last of him. 

It was easy enough to get on board 
in the confusion that attends a vessel's 
departure ; and in one of the dark 
corners of Steerage No. i, flat in a bunk 
and with an empty stomach, Alick made 
the voyage from the Broomielaw to 
Greenock. That night, the ship's yeo- 
man pulled him out by the heels and 
had him before the mate. Two other 
stowaways had already been found and 
sent ashore ; but by this time darkness 
had fallen, they were out in the middle 
of the estuary, and the last steamer had 
left them till the morning. 

'Take him to the forecastle and give 



Il6 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

him a meal,' said the mate, 'and see 
and pack him off the first thing to- 
morrow.' 

In the forecastle he had supper, a 
good night's rest, and breakfast ; and 
was sitting placidly with a pipe, fancy- 
ing all was over and the game up for 
good with that ship, when one of the 
sailors grumbled out an oath at him, 
with a ' What are you doing there?' and 
1 Do you call that hiding, anyway ?' There 
was need of no more; Alick was in 
another bunk before the day was older. 
Shortly before the passengers arrived, 
the ship was cursorily inspected. He 
heard the round come down the com- 
panion and look into one pen after 
another, until they came within two of 
the one in which he lay concealed. 
Into these last two they did not enter, 
but merely glanced from without ; and 
Alick had no doubt that he was person- 
ally favoured in this escape. It was the 



THE STOWAWAYS. ^7 

character of the man to attribute noth- 
ing to luck and but little to kindness ; 
whatever happened to him he had earned 
in his own right amply ; favours came 
to him from his singular attraction and 
adroitness, and misfortunes he had al- 
ways accepted with his eyes open. Half 
an hour after the searchers had departed, 
the steerage began to fill with legiti- 
mate passengers, and the worst of 
Alick's troubles was at an end. He was 
soon making himself popular, smoking 
other people's tobacco, and politely 
sharing their private stock of delicacies, 
and when night came he retired to his 
bunk beside the others with composure. 
Next day by afternoon, Lough Foyle 
being already far behind, and only the 
rough north-western hills of Ireland 
within view, Alick appeared on deck to 
court inquiry and decide his fate. As a 
matter of fact, he was known to several 
on board, and even intimate with one 



I I 8 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

of the engineers ; but it was plainly not 
the etiquette of such occasions for the 
authorities to avow their information. 
Every one professed surprise and anger 
on his appearance, and he was led 
prisoner before the captain. 

1 What have you got to say for your- 
self ?' inquired the captain. 

1 Not much,' said Alick ; ' but when a 
man has been a long time out of a job, 
he will do things he would not under 
other circumstances.' 

'Are you willing to work ? ' 

Alick swore he was burning to be 
useful. 

'And what can you do?' asked the 
captain. 

He replied composedly that he was 
a brass-fitter by trade. 

'I think you will be better at engin- 
eering ? ' suggested the officer, with a 
shrewd look. 

1 No, sir,' says Alick simply. — ' There 's 



THE STOWAWAYS. Iig 

few can beat me at a lie,' was his engag- 
ing commentary to me as he recounted 
the affair. 

'Have you been to sea?' again asked 
the captain. 

'I've had a trip on a Clyde steam- 
boat, sir, but no more,' replied the un- 
abashed Alick. 

'Well, we must try and find some 
work for you,' concluded the officer. 

And hence we behold Alick, clear of 
the hot engine-room, lazily scraping 
paint and now and then taking a pull 
upon a sheet. 'You leave me alone,' 
was his deduction. ' When I get talk- 
ing to a man, I can get round him.' 

The other stowaway, whom I will call 
the Devonian — it was noticeable that 
neither of thern told his name — had 
both been brought up and seen the 
world in a much smaller way. His 
father, a confectioner, died and was 
closely followed by his mother. His 



120 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

sisters had taken, I think, to dress-mak- 
ing. He himself had returned from 
sea about a year ago and gone to live 
with his brother, who kept the ' George 
Hotel' — 'it was not quite a real hotel,' 
added the candid fellow — 'and had a 
hired man to mind the horses.' At first 
the Devonian was very welcome ; but as 
time went on his brother not unnatur- 
ally grew cool towards him, and he 
began to find himself one too many at 
the * George Hotel.' 'I don't think 
brothers care much for you,' he said, as 
a general reflection upon life. Hurt at 
this change, nearly penniless, and too 
proud to ask for more, he set off on 
foot and walked eighty miles to Wey- 
mouth, living on the journey as he 
could. He would have enlisted, but he 
was too small for the army and too old 
for the navy; and thought himself 
fortunate at last to find a berth on 
board a trading dandy. Somewhere in 



THE STOWAWAYS. 121 

the Bristol Channel, the dandy sprung 
a leak and went down ; and though the 
crew were picked up and brought 
ashore by fishermen, they found them- 
selves with nothing but the clothes 
upon their back. His next engage- 
ment was scarcely better starred; for 
the ship proved so leaky, and frightened 
them all so heartily during a short pas- 
sage through the Irish Sea, that the 
entire crew deserted and remained 
behind upon the quays of Belfast. 

Evil days were now coming thick on 
the Devonian. He could find no berth 
in Belfast, and had to work a passage 
to Glasgow on a steamer. She reached 
the Broomielaw on a Wednesday : the 
Devonian had a bellyful that morning, 
laying in breakfast manfully to provide 
against the future, and set off along 
the quays to seek employment. But he 
was now not only penniless, his clothes 
had begun to fall in tatters; he had 



122 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

begun to have the look of a street 
Arab; and captains will have nothing 
to say to a ragamuffin ; for in that 
trade, as in all others, it is the coat that 
depicts the man. You may hand, reef, 
and steer like an angel, but if you have 
a hole in your trousers, it is like a mill- 
stone round your neck. The Devonian 
lost heart at so many refusals. He had 
not the impudence to beg ; although as 
he said, 'when I had money of my 
own, I always gave it.' It was only on 
Saturday morning, after three whole 
days of starvation, that he asked a scone 
from a milkwoman, who added of her 
own accord a glass of milk. He had 
now made up his mind to stow away, 
not from any desire to see America, but 
merely to obtain the comfort of a place 
in the forcastle and a supply of familiar 
sea-fare. He lived by begging, always 
from milkwomen, and always scones 
and milk, and was not once refused. It 



THE STOWAWAYS. 1 23 

was vile wet weather, and he could 
never have been dry. By night he 
walked the streets, and by day slept 
upon Glasgow Green, and heard, in the 
intervals of his dozing, the famous 
theologians of the spot clear up intricate 
points of doctrine and appraise the 
merits of the clergy. He had not 
much instruction ; he could ' read bills 
on the street,' but was * main bad at 
writing ' ; yet these theologians seem to 
have impressed him with a genuine 
sense of amusement. Why he did not 
go to the Sailor's Home I know not; I 
presume there is in Glasgow one of 
these institutions, which are by far the 
happiest and the wisest effort of con- 
temporaneous charity ; but I must stand 
to my author, as they say in old books, 
and relate the story as I heard it. In 
the meantime, he had tried four times 
to stow away in different vessels, and 
four times had been discovered and 



124 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

handed back to starvation. The fifth 
time was lucky; and you may judge if 
he were pleased to be aboard ship again, 
at his old work, and with duff twice a 
week. He was, said Alick, ' a devil for 
the duff.' Or if devil was not the word, 
it was one if anything stronger. 

The difference in the conduct of the 
two was remarkable. The Devonian 
was as willing as any paid hand, swarmed 
aloft among the first, pulled his natural 
weight and firmly upon a rope, and 
found work for himself when there was 
none to show him. Alick, on the other 
hand, was not only a skulker in the grain, 
but took a humorous and fine gentle- 
manly view of the transaction. He 
would speak to me by the hour in osten- 
tatious idleness; and only if the boYun 
or a mate came by, fell-to languidly for 
just the necessary time till they were 
out of sight. ' I 'm not breaking my 
heart with it,' he remarked. 



THE STOWAWAYS. 1 25 

Once there was a hatch to be opened 
near where he was stationed; he watched 
the preparations for a second or so sus- 
piciously, and then, ' Hullo,' said he, 
1 here 's some real work coming — I 'm 
off/ and he was gone that moment. 
Again, calculating the six guinea pas- 
sage-money, and the probable duration 
of the passage, he remarked pleasantly 
that he was getting six shillings a day 
for this job, 'and it 's pretty dear to the 
company at that.' ' They are making 
nothing by me,' was another of his 
observations; ' they 're making some- 
thing by that fellow.' And he pointed 
to the Devonian, who was just then 
busy to the eyes. 

The more you saw of Alick, the more, 
it must be owned, you learned to de- 
spise him. His natural talents were of 
no use either to himself or others; for 
his character had degenerated like his 
face, and become pulpy and pretentious. 



126 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

Even his power of persuasion, which 
was certainly very surprising, stood in 
some danger of being lost or neutral- 
ised by over-confidence. He lied in an 
aggressive, brazen manner, like a pert 
criminal in the dock; and he was so 
vain of his own cleverness that he could 
not refrain from boasting, ten minutes 
after, of the very trick by which he had 
deceived you. ' Why, now I have more 
money than when I came on board,' he 
said one night, exhibiting a sixpence, 
' and yet I stood myself a bottle of beer 
before I went to bed yesterday. And 
as for tobacco, I have fifteen sticks of it' 
That was fairly successful indeed; yet a 
man of his superiority, and with a less 
obtrusive policy, might, who knows? 
have got the length of half a crown. A 
man who prides himself upon persua- 
sion should learn the persuasive faculty 
of silence, above all as to his own mis- 
deeds. It is only in the farce and fo* 



THE STOWAWAYS. 1 27 

dramatic purposes that Scapin enlarges 
on his peculiar talents to the world at 
large. 

Scapin is perhaps a good name for 
this clever, unfortunate Alick; for at the 
bottom of all his misconduct there was 
a guiding sense of humour that moved 
you to forgive him. It was more than 
half a jest that he conducted his exist- 
ence. ' Oh, man,' he said to me once 
with unusual emotion, like a man think- 
ing of his mistress, ' I would give up 
anything for a lark.' 

It was in relation to his fellow-stow- 
away that Alick showed the best, or 
perhaps I should say, the only, good 
points of his nature. ' Mind, you,' 
he said suddenly, changing his tone, 
1 mind you that 's a good boy. He 
wouldn't tell you a lie. A lot of them 
think he is a scamp because his clothes 
are ragged, but he isn't; he's as good as 
gold.' To hear him, you become aware 



128 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

that Alick himself had a taste for virtue. 
He thought his own idleness and the 
other's industry equally becoming. He 
was no more anxious to insure his own 
reputation as a liar than to uphold the 
truthfulness of his companion; and he 
seemed unaware of what was incongru- 
ous in his attitude, and was plainly sin- 
cere in both characters. 

It was not surprising that he should 
take an interest in the Devonian, for the 
lad worshipped and served him in love 
and wonder. Busy as he was, he would 
find time to warn Alick of an approach- 
ing officer, or even to tell him that the 
coast was clear, and he might slip off 
and smoke a pipe in safety. ' Tom,' he 
once said to him, for that was the name 
which Alick ordered him to use, ' if you 
don't like going to the galley, I '11 go 
for you. You ain't used to this kind of 
thing, you ain't. But I 'm a sailor; and 
I can understand the feelings of any 



THE STOWAWAYS. I 29 

fellow, I can.' Again, he was hard up, 
and casting about for some tobacco, for 
he was not so liberally used in this re- 
spect as others perhaps less worthy, 
when Alick offered him the half of one 
of his fifteen sticks. I think, for my 
part, he might have increased the offer 
to a whole one, or perhaps a pair of 
them, and not lived to regret his liber- 
ality. But the Devonian refused. ' No,' 
he said, ' you 're a stowaway like me; I 
won't take it from you, I '11 take it from 
some one who's not down on his luck.' 
It was notable in this generous lad 
that he was strongly under the influence 
of sex. If a woman passed near where 
he was working, his eyes lit up, his 
hand paused, and his mind wandered 
instantly to other thoughts. It was 
natural that he should exercise a fasci- 
nation proportionally strong upon 
women. He begged, you will remem- 
ber, from women only, and was never 



130 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

refused. Without wishing to explain 
away the charity of those who helped 
him, I cannot but fancy he may have 
owed a little to his handsome face, and 
to that quick, responsive nature, formed 
for love, which speaks eloquently 
through all disguises, and can stamp an 
impression in ten minutes' talk or an 
exchange oi glances. He was the more 
dangerous in that he was far from bold, 
but seemed to woo in spite of himself, 
and with a soft and pleading eye. 
Ragged as he was, and many a scare- 
crow is in that respect more comfortably 
furnished, even on board he was not 
without some curious admirers. 

There was a girl among the passen- 
gers, a tall, blonde, handsome, strapping 
Irishwoman, with a wild, accommodat- 
ing eye, whom Alick had dubbed 
Tommy, with that transcendental appro- 
priateness that defies analysis. One 
day the Devonian was lying for warmth 



THE STOWAWAYS. I3I 

in the upper stoke-hole, which stands 
open on the deck, when Irish Tommy 
came past, very neatly attired, as was 
her custom. 

' Poor fellow,' she said, stopping, 
'you haven't a vest.' 

'No,' he said; 'I wish I 'ad.' 

Then she stood and gazed on him in 
silence, until, in his embarrassment, for 
he knew not how to look under this 
scrutiny, he pulled out his pipe and 
began to fill it with tobacco. 

'Do you want a match?' she asked. 
And before he had time to reply, she 
ran off and presently returned with 
more than one. 

That was the beginning and the 
end, as far as our passage is con- 
cerned, of what I will make bold to 
call this love-affair. There are many 
relations which go on to marriage and 
last during a lifetime, in which less 
human feeling is engaged than in this 



132 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

scene of five minutes at the stoke- 
hole. 

Rigidly speaking, this would end the 
chapter of the stowaways; but in a 
larger sense of the word I have yet more 
to add. Jones had discovered and 
pointed out to me a young woman who 
was remarkable among her fellows for 
a pleasing and interesting air. She 
was poorly clad, to the verge, if not 
over the line, of disrespectability, with a 
ragged old jacket and a bit of a sealskin 
cap no bigger than your fist; but her 
eyes, her whole expression, and her man- 
ner, even in ordinary moments, told of 
a true womanly nature, capable of love, 
anger, and devotion. She had a look, 
too, of refinement, like one who might 
have been a better lady than most, had 
she been allowed the opportunity. 
When alone she seemed pre-occupied 
and sad ; but she was not often alone ; 
there was usually by her side a heavy, 



THE STOWAWAYS. 133 

dull, gross man in rough clothes, chary 
of speech and gesture — not from cau- 
tion, but poverty of disposition; a man 
like a ditcher, unlovely and uninterest- 
ing ; whom she petted and tended and 
waited on with her eyes as if he had 
been Amadis of Gaul. It was strange 
to see this hulking fellow dog-sick, and 
this delicate, sad woman caring for him. 
He seemed, from first to last, insensible 
of her caresses and attentions, and she 
seemed unconscious of his insensibility. 
The Irish husband, who sang his wife to 
sleep, and this Scottish girl serving her 
Orson, were the two bits of human 
nature that most appealed tome through- 
out the voyage. 

On the Thursday before we arrived, 
the tickets were collected ; and soon a 
rumour began to go round the ves- 
sel ; and this girl, with her bit of seal- 
skin cap, became the center of whiper- 
ing and pointed ringers. She also, it 



134 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

was said, was a stowaway of a sort ; for 
she was on board with neither ticket nor 
money; and the man with whom she 
travelled was the father of a family, who 
had left wife and children to be hers. 
The ship's officers discouraged the story, 
which may therefore have been a story 
and no more ; but it was believed in the 
steerage, and the poor girl had to 
encounter many curious eyes from that 
day forth. 



Personal Experience and 
Review 



*T^ RAVEL is of two kinds; and this 
A voyage of mine across the ocean 
combined both. 'Out of my country 
and myself I go,' sings the old poet: 
and I was not only travelling out of my 
country in latitude and longitude, but 
out of myself in diet, associates, and 
consideration. Part of the interest and 
a great deal of the amusement flowed, 
at least to me, from this novel situation 
in the world. 

I found that I had what they call 
fallen in life with absolute success and 
verisimilitude. I was taken for a steerage 
passenger ; no one seemed surprised that 
I should be so; and there was nothing but 
the brass plate between decks to remind 
135 



I36 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

me that I had once been a gentleman. 
In a former book, describing a former 
journey, I expressed some wonder that 
I could be readily and naturally taken 
for a pedlar, and explained the accident 
by the difference of language and man- 
ners between England and France. I 
must now take a humbler view ; for here 
I was among my own countrymen, 
somewhat roughly clad, to be sure, but 
with every advantage of speech and 
manner; and I am bound to confess 
that I passed for nearly anything you 
please except an educated gentleman. 
The sailors called me 'mate,' the officers 
addressed me as 'my man,' my comrades 
accepted me without hesitation for a 
person of their own character and exper- 
ience, but with some curious informa- 
tion. One, a mason himself, believed 
I was a mason ; several, and among 
these at least one of the seamen, judged 
me to be a petty officer in the American 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I 37 

navy ; and I was so often set down for a 
practical engineer that at last I had not 
the heart to deny it. From all these 
guesses I drew one conclusion, which 
told against the insight of my compan- 
ions. They might be close observers in 
their own way, and read the manners in 
the face ; but it was plain that they did 
not extend their observation to the 
hands. 

To the saloon passengers also I sus- 
tained my part without a hitch. It is 
true I came little in their way ; but when 
we did encounter, there was no recogni- 
tion in their eye, although I confess I 
sometimes courted it in silence. All 
these, my inferiors and equals, took me, 
like the transformed monarch in the 
story, for a mere common, human man. 
They gave me a hard, dead look, with 
the flesh about the eye kept unrelaxed. 

With the women this surprised me 
less, as I had already experimented on 



I38 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

the sex by going abroad through a 
suburban part of London simply attired 
in a sleeve-waistcoat. The result was 
curious. I then learned for the first 
time, and by the exhaustive process, 
how much attention ladies are accus- 
tomed to bestow on all male creatures of 
their own station ; for, in my humble 
rig, each one who went by me caused me 
a certain shock of surprise and a sense 
of something wanting. In my normal 
circumstances, it appeared every young 
lady must have paid me some tribute of 
a glance ; and though I had often not 
detected it when it was given, I was well 
aware of its absence when it was with- 
held. My height seemed to decrease 
with every woman who passed me, for 
she passed me like a dog. This is one 
of my grounds for supposing that what 
are called the upper classes may some- 
times produce a disagreeable impression 
\n what are called the lower ; and I wish 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 1 39 

some one would continue my experi- 
ment, and find out exactly at what stage 
of toilette a man becomes invisible to 
the well-regulated female eye. 

Here on shipboard the matter was put 
to a more complete test; for, even with 
the addition of speech and manner, I 
passed among the ladies for precisely 
the average man of the steerage. It was 
one afternoon that I saw this demon- 
strated. A very plainly dressed woman 
was taken ill on deck. I think I had 
the luck to be present at every sudden 
seizure during all the passage; and on 
this occasion found myself in the place 
of importance, supporting the sufferer. 
There was not only a large crowd imme- 
diately around us, but a considerable 
knot of saloon passengers leaning over 
our heads from the hurricane-deck. 
One of these, an elderly managing 
woman, hailed me with counsels. Of 
course I had to reply; and as the talk 



10 



140 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

went on, I began to discover that the 
whole group took me for the husband. 
I looked upon my new wife, poor crea- 
ture, with mingled feelings ; and I must 
own she had not even the appearance of 
the poorest class of city servant-maids, 
but looked more like a country wench 
who should have been employed at a 
roadside inn. Now was the time for me 
to go and study the brass plate. 

To such of the officers as knew about 
me — the doctor, the purser, and the 
stewards — I appeared in the light of a 
broad joke. The fact that I spent the 
better part of my day in writing had 
gone abroad over the ship and tickled 
them all prodigiously. Whenever they 
met me they referred to my absurd 
occupation with familiarity and breadth 
of humorous intention. Their manner 
was well calculated to remind me of my 
fallen fortunes. You may be sincerely 
amused by the amateur literary efforts 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I4I 

of a gentleman, but you scarce publish 
the feeling to his face. ' Well ! ' they 
would say: 'still writing?' And the 
smile would widen into a laugh. The 
purser came one day into the cabin, and, 
touched to the heart by my misguided 
industry, offered me some other kind of 
writing, 'for which,' he added pointedly, 
'you will be paid.' This was nothing 
else than to copy out the list of passen- 
gers. 

Another trick of mine which told 
against my reputation was my choice of 
roosting-place in an active draught 
upon the cabin floor. I was openly 
jeered and flouted for this eccentricity ; 
and a considerable knot would some- 
times gather at the door to see my last 
dispositions for the night. This was 
embarrassing, but I learned to support 
the trial with equanimity. 

Indeed I may say that, upon the 
whole, my new position sat lightly and 



142 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

naturally upon my spirits. I accepted 
the consequences with readiness, and 
found them far from difficult to bear. 
The steerage conquered me; I con- 
formed more and more to the type of 
the place, not only in manner but at 
heart, growing hostile to the officers and 
cabin passengers who looked down 
upon me, and day by day greedier for 
small delicacies. Such was the result, 
as I fancy, of a diet of bread and butter, 
soup and porridge. We think we have 
no sweet tooth as long as we are full to 
the brim of molasses ; but a man must 
have sojourned in the workhouse before 
he boasts himself indifferent to dainties. 
Every evening, for instance, I was more 
and more pre-occupied about our 
doubtful fare at tea. If it was delicate 
my heart was much lightened ; if it was 
but broken fish I was proportionally 
downcast. The offer of a little jelly 
from a fellow-passenger more provident 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I43 

than myself caused a marked elevation 
in my spirits. And I would have gone 
to the ship's end and back again for an 
oyster or a chipped fruit. 

In other ways I was content with my 
position. It seemed no disgrace to be 
confounded with my company ; for I 
may as well declare at once I found 
their manners as gentle and becoming 
as those of any other class. I do not 
mean that my friends could have sat 
down without embarrassment and laugh- 
able disaster at the table of a duke. 
That does not imply an inferiority of 
breeding, but a difference of usage. 
Thus I flatter myself that I conducted 
myself well among my fellow-passen- 
gers ; yet my most ambitious hope is not 
to have avoided faults, but to have com- 
mitted as few as possible. I know too 
well that my tact is not the same as 
their tact, and that my habit of a differ- 
ent society constituted, not only no 



144 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

qualification, but a positive disability to 
move easily and becomingly in this. 
When Jones complimented me — because 
I ' managed to behave very pleasantly ' 
to my fellow-passengers, was how he 
put it — I could follow the thought in 
his mind, and knew his compliment to 
be such as we pay foreigners on their 
proficiency in English. I dare say this 
praise was given me immediately on the 
back of some unpardonable solecism, 
which had led him to review my con- 
duct as a whole. We are all ready to 
laugh at the ploughman among lords ; 
we should consider also the case of a 
lord among the ploughmen. I have 
seen a lawyer in the house of a Hebri- 
dean fisherman ; and I know, but noth- 
ing will induce me to disclose, which of 
these two was the better gentleman. 
Some of our finest behaviour, though it 
looks well enough from the boxes, may 
seem even brutal to the gallery. We 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I45 

boast too often manners that are paro- 
chial rather than universal ; that, like a 
country wine, will not bear transporta- 
tion for a hundred miles, nor from the 
parlour to the kitchen. To be a gen- 
tleman is to be one all the world over, 
and in every relation and grade of soci- 
ety. It is a high calling, to which a 
man must first be born, and then devote 
himself for life. And, unhappily, the 
manners of a certain so-called upper 
grade have a kind of currency, and meet 
with a certain external acceptation 
throughout all the others, and this tends 
to keep us well satisfied with slight 
acquirements and the amateurish 
accomplishments of a clique. But 
manners, like art, should be human and 
central. 

Some of my fellow-passengers, as I 
now moved among them in a relation 
of equality, seemed to me excellent 
gentlemen. They were not rough, nor 



I46 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

hasty, nor disputatious ; debated pleas- 
antly, differed kindly ; were helpful, 
gentle, patient, and placid. The type 
of manners was plain, and even heavy ; 
there was little to please the eye, but 
nothing to shock ; and I thought gen- 
tleness lay more nearly at the spring of 
behavior than in many more ornate and 
delicate societies. I say delicate, where 
I cannot say refined ; a thing may be 
fine, like ironwork, without being deli- 
cate like lace. There was here less 
delicacy ; the skin supported more cal- 
lously the natural surface of events, the 
mind received more bravely the crude 
facts of human existence ; but I do not 
think that there was less effective refine- 
ment, less consideration for others, less 
polite suppression of self. I speak of 
the best among my fellow-passengers ; 
for in the steerage, as well as in the sa- 
loon, there is a mixture. Those, then, 
with whom I found myself in sympathy, 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I 47 

and of whom I may therefore hope to 
write with a greater measure of truth, 
were not only as good in their manners, 
but endowed with very much the same 
natural capacities, and about as wise in 
deduction, as the bankers and barristers 
of what is called society. One and all 
were too much interested in discon- 
nected facts, and loved information for 
its own sake with too rash a devotion ; 
but people in all classes display the 
same appetite as they gorge themselves 
daily with the miscellaneous gossip of 
the newspaper. Newspaper reading, as 
far as I can make out, is often rather a 
sort of brown study than an act of cult- 
ure. I have myself palmed off yester- 
day's issue on a friend, and seen him 
re-peruse it for a continuance of minutes 
with an air at once refreshed and sol- 
emn. Workmen, perhaps, pay more 
attention ; but though they may be 
eager listeners, they have rarely seemed 



I48 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

to me either willing or careful thinkers. 
Culture is not measured by the great- 
ness of the field which is covered by our 
knowledge, but by the nicety with which 
we can perceive relations in that field, 
whether great or small. Workmen, 
certainly those who were on board with 
me, I found wanting in this quality or 
habit of the mind. They did not per- 
ceive relations, but leaped to a so-called 
cause, and thought the problem settled. 
Thus the cause of everything in En- 
gland was the form of government, and 
the cure for all evils was, by conse- 
quence, a revolution. It is surprising 
how many of them said this, and that 
none should have had a definite thought 
in his head as he said it. Some hated 
the Church because they disagreed with 
it; some hated Lord Beaconsfield be- 
cause of war and taxes ; all hated the 
masters, possibly with reason. But 
these feelings were not at the root of 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. 1 49 

the matter ; the true reasoning of their 
souls ran thus — I have not got on ; I 
ought to have got on ; if there was a 
revolution I should get on. How? 
They had no idea. Why ? Because — 
because — well, look at America! 

To be politically blind is no distinc- 
tion ; we are all so, if you come to that. 
At bottom, as it seems to me, there is 
but one question in modern home poli- 
tics, though it appears in many shapes, 
and that is the question of money ; and 
but one political remedy, that the peo- 
ple should grow wiser and better. My 
workmen fellow-passengers were as im- 
patient and dull of hearing on the 
second of these points as any member 
of Parliament; but they had some 
glimmerings of the first. They would 
not hear of improvement on their part, 
but wished the world made over again 
in a crack, so that they might remain 
improvident and idle and debauched, 



150 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

and yet enjoy the comfort and respect 
that should accompany the opposite 
virtues ; and it was in this expectation, 
as far as I could see, that many of them 
were now on their way to America. 
But on the point of money they saw 
clearly enough that inland politics, so 
far as they were concerned, were redu- 
cible to the question of annual income ; 
a question which should long ago have 
been settled by a revolution, they did 
not know how, and which they were 
now about to settle for themselves, once 
more they knew not how, by crossing 
the Atlantic in a steamship of consider- 
able tonnage. 

And yet it has been amply shown 
them that the second or income ques- 
tion is in itself nothing, and may as 
well be left undecided, if there be no 
wisdom and virtue to profit by the 
change. It is not by a man's purse, but 
by his character, that he is rich or poor. 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I 5 I 

Barney will be poor, Alick will be poor, 
Mackay will be poor; let them go 
where they will, and wreck all the gov- 
ernments under heaven, they will be 
poor until they die. 

Nothing is perhaps more notable in the 
average workman than his surprising 
idleness, and the candor with which he 
confesses to the failing. It has to me 
been always something of a relief to 
find the poor, as a general rule, so little 
oppressed with work. I can in conse- 
quence enjoy my own more fortunate 
beginning with a better grace. The 
other day I was living with a farmer in 
America, an old frontiersman, who had 
worked and fought, hunted and farmed, 
from his childhood up. He excused 
himself for his defective education on 
the ground that he had been overworked 
from first to last. Even now, he said, 
anxious as he was, he had never the 
time to take up a book. In conse- 



152 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

quence of this, I observed him closely ; 
he was occupied for four or, at the ex- 
treme outside, for five hours out of the 
twenty-four, and then principally in 
walking ; and the remainder of the day 
he passed in horn idleness, either eating 
fruit or standing with his back against 
a door. I have known men do hard 
literary work all morning, and then un- 
dergo quite as much physical fatigue 
by way of relief as satisfied this power- 
ful frontiersman for the day. He, at 
least, like all the educated class, did so 
much homage to industry as to persuade 
himself he was industrious. But the 
average mechanic recognizes his idleness 
with effrontery ; he has even, as I am 
told, organized it. 

I give the story as it was told me, and 
it was told me for a fact. A man fell 
from a housetop in the city of Aberdeen, 
and was brought into hospital with 
broken bones. He was asked what was 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I 53 

his trade, and replied that he was a 
tapper. No one had ever heard of such 
a thing before ; the officials were filled 
with curiosity ; they besought an expla- 
nation. It appeared that when a party 
of slaters were engaged upon a roof, 
they would now and then be taken with 
a fancy for the public-house. Now a 
seamstress, for example, might slip away 
from, her work and no one be the wiser; 
but if these fellows adjourned, the tap- 
ping of the mallets would cease, and 
thus the neighbourhood be advertised 
of their defection. Hence the career of 
the tapper. He has to do the tapping 
and keep up an industrious bustle on 
the housetop during the absence of the 
slaters. When he taps for only one or 
two the thing is child's-play, but when 
he has to represent a whole troop, it is 
then that he earns his money in the 
sweat of his brow. Then must he bound 
from spot to spot, reduplicate, tripli- 



154 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

cate, sexduplicate his single personality, 
and swell and hasten his blows, until 
he produce a perfect illusion for the ear, 
and you would swear that a crowd of 
emulous masons were continuing mer- 
rily to roof the house. It must be a 
strange sight from an upper window. 

I heard nothing on board of the tap- 
per ; but I was astonished at the stor- 
ies told by my companions. Skulking, 
shirking, malingering, were all estab- 
lished tactics, it appeared. They could 
see no dishonesty where a man who is 
paid for an hour's work gives half an 
hour's consistent idling in its place. 
Thus the tapper would refuse to watch 
for the police during a burglary, and 
call himself an honest man. It is not 
sufficiently recognized that our race 
detests to work. If I thought that I 
should have to work every day of my 
life as hard as I am working now, I 
should be tempted to give up the strug- 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I 55 

gle. And the workman early begins on 
his career of toil. He has never had 
his fill of holidays in the past, and his 
prospect of holidays in the future is 
both distant and uncertain. In the cir- 
cumstances, it would require a high 
degree of virtue not to snatch allevia- 
tions for the moment. 

There were many good talkers on the 
ship ; and I believe good talking of a 
certain sort is a common accomplish- 
ment among working men. Where 
books are comparatively scarce, a greater 
amount of information will be given 
and received by word of mouth ; and 
this tends to produce good talkers, and, 
what is no less needful for conversation, 
good listeners. They could all tell a 
story with effect. I am sometimes 
tempted to think that the less literary 
class show always better in narration ; 
they have so much more patience with 
detail, are so much less hurried to reach 
11 



156 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

the points, and preserve so much juster 
a proportion among the facts. At the 
same time their talk is dry ; they pursue 
a topic ploddingly, have not an agile 
fancy, do not throw sudden lights from 
unexpected quarters, and when the talk 
is over they often leave the matter where 
it was. They mark time instead of 
marching. They think only to argue, 
not to reach new conclusions, and use 
their reason rather as a weapon Of offence 
than as a tool for self-improvement. 
Hence the talk of some of the cleverest 
was unprofitable in result, because there 
was no give and take ; they would grant 
you as little as possible for premise, and 
begin to dispute under an oath to con- 
quer or to die. 

But the talk of a workman is apt to 
be more interesting than that of a 
wealthy merchant, because the thoughts, 
hopes, and fears of which the work- 
man's life is built lie nearer to necessity 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I 57 

and nature. They are more immediate 
to human life. An income calculated 
by the week is a far more human thing 
than one calculated by the year, and a 
small income, simply from its smallness, 
than a large one. I never wearied list- 
ening to the details of a workman's 
economy, because every item stood for 
some real pleasure. If he could afford 
pudding twice a week, you know that 
twice a week the man ate with genuine 
gusto and was physically happy ; while 
if you learn that a rich man has seven 
courses a day, ten to one the half of 
them remain untasted, and the whole is 
but misspent money and a weariness to 
the flesh. 

The difference between England and 
America to a working man was thus 
most humanly put to me by a fellow- 
passenger: ' In America,' said he, ' you 
get pies and puddings.' I do not hear 
enough, in economy books, of pies and 



I58 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

pudding. A man lives in and for the 
delicacies, adornments, and accidental 
attributes of life, such as pudding to eat 
and pleasant books and theatres to oc- 
cupy his leisure. The bare terms of 
existence would be rejected with con- 
tempt by all. If a man feeds on bread 
and butter, soup and porridge, his appe- 
tite grows wolfish after dainties. And 
the workman dwells in a borderland, 
and is always within sight of those cheer- 
less regions where life is more difficult 
to sustain than worth sustaining. Every 
detail of our existence, where it is worth 
while to cross the ocean after pie and 
pudding, is made alive and enthralling 
by the presence of genuine desire ; but 
it is all one to me whether Crcesus has a 
hundred or a thousand thousands in the 
bank. There is more adventure in the 
life of the working man who descends 
as a common soldier into the battle of 
life, than in that of the millionaire who 



PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. I 59 

sits apart in an office, like Von Moltke, 
and only directs the manoeuvres by tele- 
graph. Give me to hear about the 
career of him who is in the thick of the 
business ; to whom one change of mar- 
ket means an empty belly, and another 
a copious and savoury meal. This is 
not the philosophical, but the human 
side of economics ; it interests like a 
story ; and the life of all who are thus 
situated partakes in a small way of the 
charm of Robinson Crusoe; for every 
step is critical, and human life is pre- 
sented to you naked and verging to its 
lowest terms. 



New York 



A S we drew near to New York I was 
Jr * at first amused, and then somewhat 
staggered, by the cautious and the grisly 
tales that went the round. You would 
have thought we were to land upon a 
cannibal island. You must speak to no 
one in the streets, as they would not 
leave you till you were rooked and 
beaten. You must enter a hotel with 
military precautions; for the least you 
had to apprehend was to awake next 
morning without money or baggage, or 
necessary raiment, a lone forked radish 
in a bed ; and if the worst befell, you 
would instantly and mysteriously dis- 
appear from the ranks of mankind. 

I have usually found such stories cor- 
respond to the least modicum of fact. 
161 



1 62 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

Thus I was warned, I remember, against 
the roadside inns of the Cevennes, and 
that by a learned professor ; and when 
I reached Pradelles the warning was 
explained, it was but the far-away 
rumor and reduplication of a single 
terrifying story already half a century 
old, and half forgotten in the theatre of 
the events. So I was tempted to make 
light of these reports against America. 
But we had on board with us a man 
whose evidence it would not do to put 
aside. He had come near these perils 
in the body ; he had visited a robber 
inn. The public has an old and well- 
grounded favour for this class of inci- 
dent, and shall be gratified to the best 
of my power. 

My fellow-passenger, whom we shall 
call M'Naughten, had come from New 
York to Boston with a comrade, seek- 
ing work. They were a pair of rattling 
blades ; and, leaving their baggage at 



NEW YORK. 163 

the station, passed the day in beer-sa- 
loons, and with congenial spirits, until 
midnight struck. Then they applied 
themselves to find a lodging, and walked 
the streets till two, knocking at houses 
of entertainment and being refused 
admittance, or themselves declining the 
terms. By two the inspiration of their 
liquor had begun to wear off ; they 
were weary and humble, and after a 
great circuit found themselves in the 
same street where they had begun their 
search, and in front of a French hotel 
where they had already sought accom- 
modation. Seeing the house still open, 
they returned to the charge. A man in 
a white cap sat in an office by the door. 
He seemed to welcome them more 
warmly than when they had first pre- 
sented themselves, and the charge for 
the night had somewhat unaccountably 
fallen from a dollar to a quarter. They 
thought him ill-looking, but paid their 



164 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

quarter apiece, and were shown upstairs 
to the top of the house. There, in a 
small room, the man in the white cap 
wished them pleasant slumbers. 

It was furnished with a bed, a chair, 
and some conveniences. The door did 
not lock on the inside; and the only 
sign of adornment was a couple of 
framed pictures, one close above the 
head of the bed, and the other opposite 
the foot, and both curtained, as we may 
sometimes see valuable water-colours, or 
the portraits of the dead, or works of 
art more than usually skittish in the 
subject. It was perhaps in the hope of 
finding something of this last descrip- 
tion that M'Naughten's comrade pulled 
aside the curtain of the first. He was 
startlingly disappointed. There was no 
picture. The frame surrounded, and 
the curtain was designed to hide, an 
oblong aperture in the partition, through 
which they looked forth into the dark 



NEW YORK. 165 

corridor. A person standing without 
could easily take a purse from under the 
pillow, or even strangle a sleeper as he 
lay abed. M'Naughten and his com- 
rade stared at each other like Vasco's 
seamen, ' with a wild surmise ; ' and 
then the latter, catching up the lamp, 
ran to the other frame and roughly 
raised the curtain. There he stood, 
petrified; and M'Naughten, who had 
followed, grasped him by the wrist in 
terror. They could see into another 
room, larger in size than that which 
they occupied, where three men sat 
crouching and silent in the dark. For 
a second or so these five persons looked 
each other in the eyes, then the curtain 
was dropped, and M'Naughten and his 
friend made but one bolt of it out of 
the room and down stairs. The man 
in the white cap said nothing as they 
passed him ; and they were so pleased 
to be once more in the open night that 



1 66 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

they gave up all notion of a bed, and 
walked the streets of Boston till the 
morning. 

No one seemed much cast down by 
these stories, but all inquired after the 
address of a respectable hotel ; and I, 
for my part, put myself under the con- 
duct of Mr. Jones. Before noon of the 
second Sunday we sighted the low 
shores outside of New York harbour ; 
the steerage passengers must remain on 
board to pass through Castle Garden 
on the following morning; but we of 
the second cabin made our escape along 
with the lords of the saloon ; and by six 
o'clock Jones and I issued into West 
Street, sitting on some straw in the bot- 
tom of an open baggage-wagon. It 
rained miraculously ; and from that 
moment till on the following night I 
left New York, there was scarce a lull, 
and no cessation of the downpour. The 
roadways were flooded ; a loud strident 



NEW YORK. 167 

noise of falling water filled the air ; the 
restaurants smelt heavily of wet people 
and wet clothing. 

It took us but a few minutes, though 
it cost us a good deal of money, to be 
rattled along West Street to our desti- 
nation : 'Reunion House, No. 10 West 
Street, one minute's walk from Castle 
Garden ; convenient to Castle Garden, 
the Steamboat Landings, California 
Steamers and Liverpool Ships ; Board 
and Lodging per day 1 dollar, single 
meals 25 cents, lodging per night 25 
cents ; private rooms for families ; no 
charge for storage or baggage ; satis- 
faction guaranteed to all persons; 
Michael Mitchell, Proprietor.' Reunion 
House was, I may go the length of say- 
ing, a humble hostelry. You entered 
through a long bar-room, thence passed 
into a little dining-room, and thence 
into a still smaller kitchen. The furni- 
ture was of the plainest ; but the bar 



1 68 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

was hung in the American taste, with 
encouraging and hospitable mottoes. 

Jones was well known; we were re- 
ceived warmly; and two minutes after- 
wards I had refused a drink from the 
proprieter, and was going on, in my 
plain European fashion, to refuse a 
cigar, when Mr. Mitchell sternly inter- 
posed, and explained the situation. He 
was offering to treat me, it appeared; 
whenever an American bar-keeper pro- 
poses anything, it must be borne in 
mind that he is offering to treat; and if 
I did not want a drink, I must at least 
take the cigar. I took it bashfully, feel- 
ing I had begun my American career 
on the wrong foot. I did not enjoy 
that cigar; but this may have been from 
a variety of reasons, even the best cigar 
often failing to please if you smoke 
three-quarters of it in a drenching rain. 

For many years America was to me 
a sort of promised land; ' westward the 



NEW YORK. 169 

march of empire holds its way'; the 
race is for the moment to the young; 
what has been and what is we imperfectly 
and obscurely know; what is to be yet 
lies beyond the flight of our imagina- 
tions. Greece, Rome and Judasa are 
gone by for ever, leaving to generations 
the legacy of their accomplished work; 
China still endures, an old-inhabited 
house in the brand-new city of nations; 
England has already declined, since she 
has lost the States; and to these States, 
therefore, yet undeveloped, full of dark 
possibilities, and grown, like another 
Eve, from one rib out of the side of 
their own old land, the minds of young 
men in England turn naturally at a cer- 
tain hopeful period of their age. It 
will be hard for an American to under- 
stand the spirit. But let him imagine 
a young man, who shall have grown up 
in an old and rigid circle, following by- 
gone fashions and taught to distrust his 



170 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

own fresh instincts, and who now sud- 
denly hears of a family of cousins, all 
about his own age, who keep house 
together by themselves and live far 
from restraint and tradition; let him 
imagine this, and he will have some im- 
perfect notion of the sentiment with 
which spirited English youths turn to 
the thought of the American Republic. 
It seems to them as if, out west, the war 
of life was still conducted in the open 
air, and on free barbaric terms; as if it 
had not yet been narrowed into parlours, 
nor begun to be conducted, like some 
unjust and dreary arbitration, by com- 
promise, costume, forms of procedure, 
and sad, senseless self-denial. Which 
of these two he prefers, a man with any 
youth still left in him will decide rightly 
for himself. He would rather be house- 
less than denied a pass-key; rather go 
without food than partake of a stalled 
ox in stiff, respectable society; rather be 



NEW YORK. 171 

shot out of hand than direct his life 
according to the dictates of the world. 
He knows or thinks nothing of the 
Maine Laws, the Puritan sourness, the 
fierce, sordid appetite for dollars, or the 
dreary existence of country towns. A 
few wild story-books which delighted 
his childhood form the imaginative 
basis of his picture of America. In 
course of time, there is added to this a 
great crowd of stimulating details — 
vast cities that grow up as by enchant- 
ment; the birds, that have gone south 
in autumn, returning with the spring to 
find thousands camped upon their 
marshes, and the lamps burning far and 
near along populous streets; forests 
that disappear like snow; countries 
larger than Britain that are cleared and 
settled, one man running forth with his 
household gods before another, while 
the bear and the Indian are yet scarce 
aware of their approach; oil that gushes 
12 



172 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

from the earth; gold that is washed or 
quarried in the brooks or glens of the 
Sierras; and all that bustle, courage, 
action, and constant kaleidoscopic 
change that Walt Whitman has seized 
and set forth in his vigorous, cheerful, 
and loquacious verses. 

Here I was at last in America, and 
was soon out upon New York streets, 
spying for things foreign. The place 
had to me an air of Liverpool; but such 
was the rain that not Paradise itself 
would have looked inviting. We were 
a party of four, under two umbrellas; 
Jones and I and two Scots lads, recent 
immigrants, and not indisposed to wel- 
come a compatriot. They had been 
six weeks in New York, and neither of 
them had yet found a single job or 
earned a single halfpenny. Up to the 
present they were exactly out of pocket 
by the amount of the fare. 

The lads soon left us. Now I had 



NEW YORK. 173 

sworn by all my gods to have such a 
dinner as would rouse the dead; there 
was scarce any expense at which I should 
have hesitated; the devil was in it but 
Jones and I should dine like heathen 
emperors. I set to work, asking after a 
restaurant; and I chose the wealthiest 
and most gastronomical-looking passers- 
by to ask from. Yet, although I had 
told them I was willing to pay anything 
in reason, one and all sent me off to 
cheap, fixed-price houses, where I would 
not have eaten that night for the cost of 
twenty dinners. I do not know if this 
were characteristic of New York, or 
whether it was only Jones and I who 
looked un-dinerly and discouraged 
enterprising suggestions. But at length, 
by our own sagacity, we found a French 
restaurant, where there was a French 
waiter, some fair French cooking, some 
so-called French wine, and French cof- 
fee to conclude the whole. I never 



174 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

entered into the feelings of Jack on land 
so completely as when I tasted that 
coffee. 

I suppose we had one of the ' private 
rooms for families ' at Reunion House. 
It was very small, furnished with a bed, 
a chair, and some clothes-pegs; and it 
derived all that was necessary for the 
life of the human animal through two 
borrowed lights; one looking into the 
passage, and the second opening, with- 
out sash into another apartment, where 
three men fitfully snored, or in intervals 
of wakefulness, drearily mumbled to 
each other all night long. It will be 
observed that this was almost exactly 
the disposition of the room in 
M'Naughten's story. Jones had the 
bed; I pitched my camp upon the floor; 
he did not sleep until near morning, 
and I, for my part, never closed an eye. 

At sunrise I heard a cannon fired; 
and shortly afterwards the men in the 



NEW YORK. I75 

next room gave over snoring for good, 
and began to rustle over their toilettes. 
The sound of their voices as they talked 
was low and moaning, like that of people 
watching by the sick. Jones, who had 
at last begun to doze, tumbled and mur- 
mured, and every now and then opened 
unconscious eyes upon me where I lay. 
I found myself growing eerier and eerier, 
for I daresay I was a little fevered by 
my restless night, and hurried to dress 
and get downstairs. 

You had to pass through the rain, 
which still fell thick and resonant, to 
reach a lavatory on the other side of 
the court. There were three basin- 
stands, and a few crumpled towels and 
pieces of wet soap, white and slippery 
like fish ; nor should I forget a looking- 
glass and a pair of questionable combs. 
Another Scots lad was here, scrubbing 
his face with a good will. He had been 
three months in New York and had not 



I76 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

yet found a single job nor earned a 
single halfpenny. Up to the present, 
he also was exactly out of pocket by the 
amount of the fare. I began to grow 
sick at heart for my fellow-emigrants. 

Of my nightmare wanderings in New 
York I spare to tell. I had a thousand 
and one things to do ; only the day to 
do them in, and a journey across the 
continent before me in the evening. It 
rained with patient fury ; every now and 
then I had to get under cover for a 
while in order, so to speak, to give my 
mackintosh a rest ; for under this con- 
tinued drenching it began to grow damp 
on the inside. I went to banks, post- 
offices, railway-offices, restaurants, pub- 
lishers, booksellers, money-changers, 
and wherever I went a pool would 
gather about my feet, and those who 
were careful of their floors would look 
on with an unfriendly eye. Wherever I 
went, too, the same traits struck me : 



NEW YORK. 177 

the people were all surprisingly rude 
and surprisingly kind. The money- 
changer cross-questioned me like a 
French commissary, asking my age, my 
business, my average income, and my 
destination, beating down my attempts 
at evasion, and receiving my answers in 
silence ; and yet when all was over, he 
shook hands with me up to the elbows, 
and sent his lad nearly a quarter of a 
mile in the rain to get me books at a 
reduction. Again, in a very large pub- 
lishing and bookselling establishment, 
a man, who seemed to be the manager, 
received me as I had certainly never 
before been received in any human shop, 
indicated squarely that he put no faith 
in my honesty, and refused to look up 
the names of books or give me the 
slightest help or information, on the 
ground, like the steward, that it was 
none of his business. I lost my temper 
at last, said I was a stranger in America 



I78 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

and not learned in their etiquette ; but 
I would assure him, if he went to any 
bookseller in England, of more hand- 
some usage. The boast was perhaps 
exaggerated ; but like many a long shot, 
it struck the gold. The manager passed 
at once from one extreme to the other ; 
I may say that from that moment he 
loaded me with kindness ; he gave me 
all sorts of good advice, wrote me down 
addresses, and came bare-headed into 
the rain to point me out a restaurant, 
where I might lunch, nor even then did 
he seem to think that he had done 
enough. These are (it is as well to be 
bold in statement) the manners of 
America. It is this same opposition 
that has most struck me in people of 
almost all classes and from east to west. 
By the time a man had about strung me 
up to be the death of him by his insulting 
behaviour, he himself would be just upon 
the point of melting into confidence and 



NEW YORK. I79 

serviceable attentions. Yet I suspect, 
although I have met with the like in so 
many parts, that this must be the char- 
acter of some particular state or group 
of states ; for in America, and this again 
in all classes, you will find some of the 
softest-mannered gentlemen in the world. 
I was so wet when I got back to 
Mitchell's toward the evening, that I 
had simply to divest myself of my 
shoes, socks and trousers, and leave 
them behind for the benefit of New 
York city. No fire could have dried 
them ere I had to start; and to pack 
them in their present condition was to 
spread ruin among my other posses- 
sions. With a heavy heart I said fare- 
well to them as they lay a pulp in the 
middle of a pool upon the floor of 
Mitchell's kitchen. I wonder if they 
are dry by now. Mitchell hired a man 
to carry my baggage to the station, 
which was hard by, accompanied me 



180 THE AMATEUR EMIGRANT. 

thither himself, and recommended me 
to the particular attention of the offi- 
cials. No one could have been kinder. 
Those who are out of pocket may go 
safely to Reunion House, where they 
will get decent meals and find an honest 
and obliging landlord. I owed him 
this word of thanks, before I enter fairly 
on the second and far less agreeable 
chapter of my emigrant experience. 



